


November

by TeekiJane



Series: A Year Apart [4]
Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-24 00:51:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1585658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeekiJane/pseuds/TeekiJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As busy as she may be, Haley still finds time to surround herself in the world of high school gossip.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Meanwhile, Back in Stoneybrook

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I find myself at the center of high school gossip

je11y6ean_h: I saw something today that made me think of you  
superjeff15: oh rlly?  
je11y6ean_h: yeah. I was thrift storing with Becca and we saw this creepy statue. I think it was supposed to be Jesus but it looked like a crazy clown  
superjeff15: and that made u think of me?  
je11y6ean_h: yup. how are things going for you?  
superjeff15: not too bad until u said i remind u of a creepy jesus clown  
je11y6ean_h: noooooooooooo!!!!!!! finding it reminded me of how happy you got when you’d find crazy shit in stores in Maine  
superjeff15: ohh sorry  
je11y6ean_h: hey, could be worse, I almost said that Becca and I were thrift whoring because that’s what Char calls it. try explaining that one lol

Becca and I were driving home from her favorite thrift store on Monday afternoon. We went there at least once a week, looking over the book selection and sometimes, the clothes. It was Becca’s one obsession in life, outside of homework. And French club. And National Honor Society. And whatever other nerdy type of afterschool activities she was involved in. 

I’d been busy too, and I guess you could call my life pretty geeky. I was working Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and every other Friday night. On those first two days, I went straight to work from glee club. And on Mondays, the days Becca stayed after school for French club, I stayed for homework club. It was more of a tutoring network—some days, I found myself explaining algebra to a group of freshmen. Other days, I had someone else explaining my trig homework to _me_. 

This particular Monday, Becca was in a spectacularly foul mood. She’d always been pretty smart and studious but unbelievably shy. She’d spent most of her first two years of high school following Charlotte around, tracking Char’s footsteps. They studied together and hung out together on their downtime. The friendship, which went back to the time when Becca had moved to town, was similar to the one By and I had. They had other friends, but they were mostly each other’s rocks. 

Or rather, they had been. Back in September, Vanessa had had a little party at her house one night. She’d invited me and Becca and Charlotte…and P and his friend Bill. And just like Vanessa had hoped, Char and Bill had hit it off. It turns out that Charlotte has a secret ‘thing’ for bad boys. Bill had a little bit of a juvenile rap sheet, and after he and P had told a couple (over-exaggerated, I expect) stories of their exploits with the police, Bill had Char wrapped around his little finger. 

Ever since then, Charlotte had been spending more time at Bill’s than at Becca’s. She and Vanessa did a lot of double dating. I suspected, though I’d never mentioned it to Becca, that ‘double dating’ mostly consisted of hanging out at P’s house, where his parents were never home, and possibly, quite a bit of making out. Vanessa insisted she still hadn’t slept with P, but I wasn’t sure just how accurate that information really was. 

“Charlotte was supposed to come over tonight,” Becca grumbled as I stopped at a stoplight. We were getting what the weatherman cheerfully likes to call a “winter mix” and I like to call “hell on my windshield.” Becca was wearing a puffy red down coat with a red and gold scarf wrapped around it. I called it her Gryffindor scarf because it looked just like the ones in the Harry Potter movies. “We were going to watch a movie and pig out on brownies. But she just sent me a text. Bill asked her to come over and ‘study’ tonight, so she’s going to his house instead.” 

I nodded sympathetically. Becca and I had been spending a lot of time together this year. It had started out with eating lunch. We had one lunch period, while Vanessa and Char had the other. But as time had gone on and Charlotte and Vanessa became so wrapped up in their boyfriends, we’d upped the amount of time we were spending together. I wasn’t mad at the other two girls, because I’d been there and done that. I’d spend as much time with Jordan as I could if he were in town. And while I did have to laugh at the irony of Char being mad at me for three years for finding my first boyfriend and becoming obsessed with him and then turning around and doing the same thing, I wasn’t going to judge. 

But it was different from Becca’s point of view. She was only single one among her friends—even her younger friend Natalie had ditched her for a boy at the start of the summer. And she and Charlotte had _always_ done stuff together. Becca was just completely lost without her. “I know it’s not the same,” I told her, “but you could come over to my house tonight. My mom’s making enchiladas and we could watch Gilmore Girls. My aunt sent me an early Christmas present—the first season on DVD.” 

She grimaced but then looked regretful. “Sorry,” she said. I don’t know if I made a face or not, but she seemed to think she had insulted me. “It’s a nice offer, and I’d definitely take you up on in any other day.” 

I shook my head. “No, Bec, I get it. I’m not Charlotte. You and I don’t have the same kind of history you have with her.” 

“Nope,” she agreed sadly. I stared at the still-red stop light, frowning a bit. Becca definitely saw that expression. “I know that you do get it,” she said after a moment. “Because I also know that I’m not Byron.” 

In spite of our cranky mood, I smiled. “Yeah,” I replied, “You have boobs.” 

Becca grinned too. “And I think I’m a little darker skinned,” she added. 

“Although,” I continued after the light changed, “You’re almost as tall as he is. And you do both like guys.” 

She was giggling by that point. “Thanks for that,” she said, still smiling. 

“Anytime. I am good for some things, you know.” I pulled up in front of Becca’s house a short time later. She gathered her backpack and her flute (she was also in the band) and her bag from the thrift store. “Hey, Bec,” I called as she stood on the sidewalk. 

“What?” 

“You want a ride to school tomorrow? It’s supposed to be really icky out.” Becca’s house wasn’t exactly on my way to school, but I remembered what it was like this time last year when I didn’t have my license. Becca wouldn’t be seventeen for almost another year. 

Becca leaned on the passenger’s seat (which was heated) while she contemplated that. She didn’t get a chance to answer; two girls from my class came walking by and Becca drew in a cautious breath. These were a couple of girls you didn’t want to mess with; say the wrong thing in front of them and you were front and center of the gossip world for weeks to come. “Oh, look,” one of them said to the other. “Isn’t that cute? Haley’s giving her little girlfriend a ride home.” 

I was inside my car and they couldn’t see me with the nasty wintery mix blanketing the windows, so I made a face. They knew it was me because I’m the only person at SHS to drive a Lexus. I got out of the car. “Hello, Sara. Elizabeth,” I called, pretending that the two of them weren’t complete wastes of breath. 

“Oh, look,” Sara repeated. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “The lezzy’s talking to me.” She turned to Elizabeth, completely seriously and, of course, more than a little sarcastic. “Should I be honored that she’s talking to me, or scared that she’s going to try to recruit me into her little dyke club?” 

Sara Hill and Elizabeth Sayers had been in my fifth grade class back in the day, and we’d almost been friends. But in sixth grade, they’d made friends with the girl who would become the bane of my middle school existence: one Kerry Bruno. The three of them became SMS’s queen bees. If they liked you, you were golden, and if they didn’t, you were toast. And back then, that _mattered_ to me. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be popular. I should have been able to make friends with those girls; we were all cheerleaders and we liked the same kinds of things. But Kerry didn’t like Charlotte and Vanessa for some reason, and because they were my friends, I got lumped in with whatever it was that Kerry disliked. I spent three whole years trying to impress Kerry and failing miserably. 

We’d headed to high school and, at that point, Kerry’s opinion of me no longer mattered. My friend Danielle and I were supposed to try out for cheerleading together; I’d ditched the tryout. I’d stopped caring whether the popular girls liked me or not. I’d had a taste of the popular life—dates with older boys and making out in the backseat of cars—and after what happened next, I wanted no part of it. I didn’t feel like cheering much for a while. 

And while I was living off the radar, Kerry and her group of cronies—in addition to Sara and Elizabeth, there was Amber and Demi and Leigh—had stopped caring about me. I discovered I liked it better that way. I knew I’d never get on Kerry’s good side, so not being in her sight was the best solution to the problem. But somehow, I’d gotten her attention again. She and her friends had three words they used for me: _lezzy_ , _dyke_ and _beard_. 

I hadn’t even known what they meant by beard until someone explained it to me. And while it wasn’t quite accurate to describe By and me, there was some elements of the term that were pretty spot on. Although I hadn’t made friends with him to deter boys, it had worked. By the time I was a sophomore, pretty much everyone in school thought that Byron was my boyfriend. And By and I had both let them. He’d tried to dissuade his brothers from the notion, but he admitted he actually liked the idea of Adam and Jordan thinking he was having a ton of sex when neither one of them was having any. And from my point of view, I didn’t get invited to parties I didn’t want to attend and on dates that I wasn’t ready for when everyone thought I had been dating the same guy for forever and a day. 

Sara and Elizabeth and their friends had obviously noted that Byron had come out of the closet. It’d been pretty hard to miss, what with the reporter and camera and all at prom. But they hadn’t noticed that I’d started dating again—and that I wasn’t dating a girl. Or maybe they’d noticed, but it was more fun to be nasty. I guess it really didn’t matter. With Bec and me constantly being together at school and neither one of us really talking to guys much, the easiest way to make fun of us was to decide we just had to be lesbians. 

I suddenly understood how By felt all those years when various kids were all calling him Queer-on. Of course, the difference was this: all he had to do was admit they were right. I didn’t have that option, because I wasn’t a lesbian. But the more I denied it, the worse it would look. So I just didn’t bother. 

I thought about Sara’s last statement about the ‘dyke club.’ I’d already put a suggestion in at school about a Gay-Straight student alliance; the student council had approved it and now it had to actually had to go through the school board. Becca and Vanessa had both said they’d join, and I’d gotten fifteen names of people who were interested if the club actually got started. I looked at Sara and Elizabeth, who were waiting for some kind of reply to their little taunt. “You can totally join the ‘dyke club,’” I said, as if they’d been serious. “As soon as it gets approval from the school board. We’re hoping to meet Mondays before school.” 

Elizabeth’s eyes went wide. “Uh,” she said eloquently. Sara elbowed her. “We’d better go,” she finally added as Sara dragged her down the street and away from us. 

I shook my head at their retreating backs, but Becca scowled at me. “Why do you have to egg them on?” she asked, irritated. 

I rolled my eyes at her. “I wasn’t ‘egging them on.’ They’re ignorant. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try to educate them a little bit.” 

Becca didn’t look soothed. “You just make things worse when you reply to their bullying,” she said, grabbing her school things again, ready to head into her house. 

I shrugged. “They’re pretty pathetic bullies. They’re not hurting my self-esteem in any way.” Becca had her flute case in one black-gloved hand, and she twirled it around. She watched me seriously. “I know I’m not a lesbian, and I also know that Kerry Bruno and her friends are completely beneath the two of us. They could stand here and tell me I was dog shit on the sidewalk and I’d just laugh at them.” Becca grimaced again. I wasn’t sure exactly what was bothering her, but I opened my car door and started the car back up. “Listen, Bec, text me tonight sometime before you go to bed. Let me know if you want that ride or not.” 

She nodded. “Thanks, Haley. See you tomorrow.” 

*** 

Becca’s mood hadn’t improved by the next day at lunch when she sat down next to me. I had leftover enchiladas in a bowl and I’d already heated them up in the microwave by the time she made it through the lunch line with some limp looking meatloaf. It was my turn to make a face. “How can you stand to eat that?” I asked her. 

She shrugged, but her expression was as if I’d insulted _her_ instead of the cafeteria food. “It’s either this or let Aunt Cecelia make my lunch,” she said, and I nodded. Aunt Cecelia was a stickler for proper nutrition; I probably would have picked the meatloaf over her properly balanced meals, too. 

I opened a yogurt smoothie I had brought from home and sipped it. “Heard any good gossip?” I asked Becca. She eyed me warily; normally, when one of us was crabby, we’d pretend we were ‘normal’ girls and discuss who was doing whom or whatever the gossip of the day was. I guess Becca’s mood was too low for that. It didn’t help that _we_ were in among the gossip these days. “What’s the matter, Bec?” I asked. 

“What’s the matter?!” she replied a shade too loud. People at several other tables turned around and looked at us; I pretended nothing was wrong. “My best friend dumped me for a spoiled rich bad boy. I don’t have a date for homecoming. And now everyone’s going around saying I’m a lesbian!” She plopped her head down on her folded arms. Byron says I have a flair for the dramatic; obviously, he’s never spent much time with Becca. 

I continued to act like nothing was wrong. “Yeah, and to make matters even worse, they’re saying you’re a lesbian with _me_.” I sipped my smoothie. “Y’know. The queen of the lesbians.” 

Becca snorted into her arms. “Right.” She looked up. “How do you stand those girls saying mean stuff about you all the time?” 

“Bec, I’ve learned one lesson in life,” I told her. She watched me seriously. “People don’t have power over you unless you give it to them. After what I’ve been through, I refuse to give any power to snotty little brats who can only build themselves up by tearing others down. I save that power for people who matter to me. Byron. Jordan.” I paused and opened a snack bag of chocolate covered raisins and held it out to her. She hadn’t touched her meatloaf, but she took a handful. “And you.” 

She ducked her head and I’m sure she was blushing. Before she could reply, someone sat down in the seat next to me, pushed it right up against my mine and put his arm around my chair. I didn’t know who it was, but I panicked and did what was instinctive: I whipped my arm around and backhanded him. Becca’s eyes got huge and although the guy’s arm didn’t move off my chair, I heard him bring his other hand to his face. I was still tense, but I’d figured out who he was and I was a little regretful over hitting him in the nose. I hadn’t broken his brother’s nose when I’d punched him, but I _could_ have broken his. “Ow,” Nick said. I turned to look at him, wondering what the hell he was doing putting his arm around me. 

Becca and I stared at him for a minute. He took his hand away and thankfully, his nose wasn’t even red. “What are you doing, Nick?” Becca asked him.

Nick had changed dramatically in the past few months. Instead of wearing whatever wrinkled clothes he found at the bottom of his closet and reeking of pot half the time, he’d smartened up. He’d dated Maria Kilbourne for a few weeks this summer, but that hadn’t worked out. But it had worked for him in a different way: Maria gossiped about him being a great date. I hadn’t wanted to know what that meant at first, but I’d found out anyway after he became one of the most sought after guys at school. Nick had figured out how to talk to girls and how their brains worked. He listened to girls talk and asked them questions about themselves. He was polite to the girls’ parents and moms loved him. (He’d clearly been taking Byron lessons.) And a lot of girls found it totally refreshing that he wasn’t looking for more than a goodnight kiss. He sat at a lunch table surrounded by adoring girls, and he had more friends than he could count (most of them female.) 

What a difference a couple months can make. 

Nick leaned forward so that he was nearly in my face. I resisted the urge to shove him out of my personal space. When we were kids, I’d once made him eat a mud pie. I sorely wished I was ten again so I could get away with that now. “I’m saving your asses,” Nick said, shifting his glance from Becca to me and back. “Just play along.” 

I hate being told to play along. At least tell me what game I’m playing so I know how to play. “I wasn’t aware my ass was any of your concern,” I told him coolly. 

Nick narrowed his eyes at me for a moment, then grinned and winked. When had he become a winker? Last June, I’d bumped into him in the Pike front hallway. I’d said excuse me; he’d mumbled something to his shoes while never making any semblance of eye contact. “Ha,” Nick said dryly. “This is the kind of gratitude I get?” He sat back in his seat, which was still pushed up against mine. He spotted something on the other side of the room that got his attention, and he lowered his voice. “Like I said, just play along.” 

Becca had a hard time talking to boys in general, and although she’d started off okay, she’d become tongue tied somewhere along the way. I didn’t get it; she and Nick had known each other for half their lives. They’d played together many times as kids. They’d even jokingly dated each other in fifth grade or so. And I know she wasn’t acting like that because she had a crush on him or anything; she and I had already discussed what guy she liked. At this point in the conversation, she sputtered a little bit. “Wha…” she began. “Who? What?” 

I spotted an unfriendly face walking our way and cringed. I still didn’t know what had prompted Nick to come sit with us, but I suddenly had a feeling I knew what he meant to do. “Becca, shhhhh.” I put my finger to my mouth with a sly grin. Becca frowned, and that’s where the three of us were when Kerry made it to the other side of the table. 

“Hey, Nick.” Kerry oozed charm in every word. Like maybe about 25 percent of the student body that had two x chromosomes, she was hoping for a date with him. She leaned over a chair, putting her hands on the back. I couldn’t see a single reason why she would do that except to show off her cleavage. She was large chested and wore pushup bras that looked like they were a size too small, so her cups runneth over. “What are you doing over here with these two…losers?” 

Nick grinned in a way I didn’t like. It reminded me of Byron when I’d just said something stupid and he was about to point that out; he was a predator who’d cornered the prey. “You wouldn’t be talking about my friends Becca and Haley, would you? Because I don’t think that’s a very nice thing to say.” 

Kerry raised an eyebrow and leaned over toward Nick, attempting to tousle his hair. He pulled back from her and got out of the chair entirely, sitting down on the other side of Becca. Kerry turned to watch his progress and her whole demeanor changed. “These dykes? They’re friends of yours?” 

Nick’s face flashed with disgust very briefly. “I’m pretty certain they’re straight.” He leaned over and put his arm around Becca’s shoulder. Her eyes went wide, but she covered quickly and put on a fake smile. Becca has always been a (closet) ham. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have asked Becca out for Friday night.” 

Of course, he’d done no such thing, but it was the exact perfect thing to say to Kerry. Not only did it indicate that Nick really didn’t think Becca was gay, but even Becca and I at the bottom of the gossip food chain knew that Kerry’s parents were going out of town and she was throwing a huge party Friday night. She instantly looked put out. “But…I was really hoping you’d come to my party Friday. It’s going to be the party of the season. Everyone’s invited.” Kerry looked at me and Becca and then grimaced. “Well, almost everyone.” 

“Sorry,” Nick told her bluntly. “I don’t hang out with losers.” He turned away from Kerry and toward Becca. “So. What movie do you want to see?” he asked her. Becca pretended to ponder that and Kerry, her mouth hanging open, walked away. 

I let out a giggle I’d been holding ever since Nick had started talking to Kerry. “Okay, you were right,” I told Nick, leaning across the table to faux-punch him in the shoulder. “We do owe you some gratitude. That was awesome.” 

Nick still had his arm around Becca. “You’re not really a lesbian, are you?” he asked her seriously. Becca remained silent, but if she had spoken at that moment, it would have been a growl. “Not that it matters to me. I’m cool. I’ll just rescind my date invitation if you are.” Becca relaxed a little bit and shook her head. “So, did you want to go out with me Friday?” 

I wasn’t sure if Nick was serious or not, but Becca finally found her voice. “Thanks, but no,” she told him. “It was nice of you to offer, but…”

“But it would be totally weird,” he finished for her. “Like going on a date with your brother.” 

She looked at him, amazed. “Yeah!” 

“I had a feeling you’d say that. That’s the only reason I’d never asked before now.” He squeezed her shoulder and got out of the seat. “Any time you two get tired of sitting over here by yourself, you can come sit with us over at my usual table. There’s plenty of room.” And then he was gone. 

I giggled some more and Becca put her hand to her forehead as she shook her head. “What got into him?” she asked. “We worked together on a science project last year and he barely said two words during the entire six weeks we worked together. Now, he’s asking me out.” 

“What’s really funny to me,” I told her seriously, “is that Nick’s kind of developed into the best of all of his brothers combined.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Well,” I started as I watched Nick stop at another table to talk to Jackie Rodowsky, “He’s polite and a good listener like By is. That’s how he caught on so quickly to girls—by really listening to them. He’s a leader and the center of things like Adam tends to be. I don’t know if he’s leading on purpose, but all he has to do is suggest something and a whole group of people instantly agree. And from what I hear, he’s sensitive to what girls need and want.” I crumpled up my lunch garbage into a ball and sighed. “Like Jordan.” 

“You really miss him, don’t you?” 

I looked at Becca. She poked her meatloaf with her fork and made a face. Instead, she ate some mashed potatoes and green beans. “All the time. We talk on the phone about five nights a week, but it’s not the same.” I didn’t tell her I’d been having dreams about Jordan nearly every night, and as time went on, they’d become more and more steamy. I shook myself. “He’s not going to be able to make it home for Thanksgiving, so I’m counting down the days until his Christmas break starts.” 

“That sucks,” Becca said as she finished her vegetables, leaving her meatloaf untouched. “I’m sorry.” I shrugged but didn’t reply. I’d known going into this school year that having a long distance relationship was going to be hard. I just hadn’t realized how hard. Over the summer, the longest I went without touching Jordan—him putting his arm around me, holding his hand, kissing him—was maybe two days. It had now been more than two months since we’d been in the same state. I touched my pearl ring and sighed. 

Becca looked thoughtful but concerned. “You said something earlier,” she said as she threw my lunch garbage on top of her tray. “I wasn’t quite sure what you meant by it.” 

“Oh?” 

“When we were talking about Kerry and how you didn’t want to give her any power over you. I understood that part just fine.” She put one elbow on the table and made a fist, leaning her head on it. “But you said something about how you’d learned that after what you’d been through. What did you mean by that, exactly?” 

Becca is pretty perceptive and she’s an amazing listener. Most people wouldn’t have noticed the emphasis I put on that. “Oh,” I said. I knew that trying to make light of things or brush it off wouldn’t work with Becca. But I also wasn’t going to tell her the truth in the middle of the cafeteria. “We all have stuff in our past that shapes who we are. There’s one event in my past that I let shape me too much. Someone who I gave way too much power to. That’s the whole reason that I dropped off the face of the world for a while there.” 

Becca watched me closely as I said that. I turned and looked away from her. “Okay,” she said after a minute. I knew from her tone of voice that she knew she wouldn’t get any further information from me, so she was going to let the matter drop and let me tell her on my own time, if I decided to. 

The bell rang and she swept the trash off the table. I gathered my backpack and the two of us went our separate ways. 

*** 

Tuesday evenings are always busy—they’re usually one of the nights that I don’t get to talk to Jordan. First comes glee club, then work. Somewhere in there I have to cram a couple of assignments, including the weekly analysis paper for English. But I’d been able to get everything done in study hall and in the brief period between glee club and Kitchen  & Bath, so I went ahead and gave him a call. 

He was understandably surprised to hear from me, but in a good way. “How’s my favorite girl?” he asked. 

“Your favorite girl is exhausted. We went through full blocking of all the dance moves for our competition today. And although I was born to sing, I was _not_ born to dance. I think my bruises have bruises.” Jordan chuckled. “And then we got this shipment of candy in today that the day shift didn’t do anything with, so I spent the whole evening running around, filling bins and backstocking.” 

“That just sounds like yet another day in the life of you,” he said with a sigh. I sighed back and curled up on my bed, wrapping my blankets around myself tightly. The wintery mix had turned to full-on snow and, even though my mom keeps it 70 degrees in our house, it definitely didn’t feel that way. “Well, I got some good news today. I got an 87 on that test I thought I bombed.” 

“Wow, Jordan,” I said, surprised. He’d gone over that ‘Intro to Communications’ test with me in excruciating detail the week before. “You gotta have more faith in yourself. You’re obviously a good student when you put your mind to it.” 

“Yeah, I’m actually really surprised. I think the real test will be how my grades are next semester, when I’m traveling all the time with the team.” He blew out a puff of air. “What about you, Honey?” he asked. “How are classes?” 

“Not too bad. Trig’s still kicking my butt, but, like I said, it’s already all bruised up anyway.” He laughed and it turned into a cough. I noticed, concerned, that he sounded congested. 

“What about AP English? Are you still regretting the decision to go for the advanced placement class?” 

Taking AP English was something Byron had goaded me into in the spring. He hadn’t dared me, but he might as well have. I didn’t consider myself an advanced placement kind of girl. My grades were decent—my GPA hovered around a 3.0—but I was always the first to place the responsibility for that on him. If he hadn’t been so insistent on us doing homework and if he hadn’t helped me with a lot of things, my grades probably wouldn’t have been nearly so good. But now, more than a quarter into a school year without him, I was doing just as well without him as with him. “Actually, I _love_ AP English. It’s my favorite class. The teacher gives us more fun work than she gives the regular senior classes. We read _The Little Prince_ and now we’re making our own private ‘perfect worlds.’ I still have to figure out how to construct mine because we have to have a visual depiction.” 

Jordan chuckled again. “Visual depiction?” he repeated. “Don’t go all genius on me.” 

I smiled. “No worries about that. I still can’t decide what I would have on my perfect planet anyway…other than you.” 

“How about you and me and a bed? Sounds like a perfect planet to me.” 

Jordan says a lot of things over the phone that he’d never say in person. I felt my cheeks grow warm, remembering the dream I’d had about him the night before. “Yeah, but I just can’t see turning _that_ in to Ms. Marquez. I have boundaries, Jordan.” He laughed and once again, it turned into a cough. “Are you feeling okay?” 

He sighed. “I’ve had a sore throat for about four days, and this cough just keeps getting worse. I’m afraid I caught that respiratory infection that’s going around.” 

“Awww. Poor baby,” I said, trying hard not to make it sound sarcastic in any way. “I wish I were there with you to nurse you back to health.” 

“If you were here, we’d probably both be sick.” 

“True. But at least we’d be together.” 

He sighed again. “Tell me something to get my mind off my throat. I’m going to go get a popsicle out of the freezer in the kitchen after I get off the phone with you.” 

I thought about that for a moment. “Well,” I said finally, not able to think of a single other thing that was going on that I hadn’t spoken with him about, “The latest rumor going around school is that Becca and I are closet lesbians.” 

There was a long pause. “Closet lesbians?” he repeated. “Wouldn’t a bed be more comfortable?” 

“Jordan!” I exclaimed. He laughed some more. “You goof.” 

He sobered up a little. “How does that make you feel when they talk like that about you?” he asked. 

I shrugged even though he couldn’t see me. “This is my theory on it: if someone knows me, they should know I’m not a lesbian. And if someone doesn’t know me, they shouldn’t care one way or the other if I am a lesbian. So the people who are going around repeating this story aren’t worth my time.” 

“Sounds like you have a positive attitude about it,” Jordan observed. 

“I’d like to think so.” I was starting to warm up finally. “Too bad Becca doesn’t agree. She’s really worried that people will start believing it. I kinda understand. I mean, she has a huge crush on Luke Martinez, but he hangs out with the kind of girls who are telling these stories. I think she’s just worried that he and all the other guys will believe it and she’ll never get a date.” 

“Ah, yeah,” Jordan said knowingly. “The unobtainable guy. Tell me, Haley. Did you ever have a crush on a guy you never thought you could get?” 

I thought about that. “No, not really,” I admitted. “Not because I think I’m so awesome that I could get any guy I wanted. More like…” I paused and thought about how to phrase this. “I guess that for a while there I was so worried about protecting myself that I didn’t even _look_ at guys at all. I didn’t really want a guy, because I didn’t want anyone touching me. I can’t name a single guy I had a crush on from the time I started high school until the time we started dating.” I looked at the clock; it was starting to get late. “How about you?” 

“Once,” he said, his voice playful. “You see, I thought she was dating my brother…” 

I grinned. “Oh, yeah?” 

“Yeah. But it turns out, she and Adam were just friends.” 

I laughed. Even when he was sick, Jordan always knew just the right thing to say. “Hey, watch it,” I warned, “or I might leave you for Becca.” 

“That,” he said solemnly, “would be a tragedy. You’re better medicine than a popsicle.” 

“And that,” I teased, “is the ultimate sign that you love someone—when you take a comment like that as a compliment.”


	2. Adventures of the Seventh Wheel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I try to be quote-unquote normal for the night...and fail miserably.

Ct_yankee_fan_00: so you decided to go to the homecoming dance even though i can’t come with you?  
Je11y6ean_h: yeah, Becca & I are going as a sort of faux-couple  
Ct_yankee_fan_00: ohhhhhhhhhhhh??????  
Je11y6ean_h: don’t get any pervert lesbian-fantasy ideas now. it’s just cheaper to buy tickets as a couple than as two singles.  
Ct_yankee_fan_00: yeah right. what else aren’t you telling me?  
Je11y6ean_h: anyway. I’m just glad she agreed to go at all. it took a lot of persuading. but with Charlotte obsessed with Bill and the two of them double dating with Vanessa and P all the time, I just needed someone to spend time with at the dance—even a fake girlfriend.  
Ct_yankee_fan_00: wait…p?  
Je11y6ean_h: yeah. you know, Vanessa’s boyfriend?  
Ct_yankee_fan_00: vanessa’s dating a guy named p? pee like tinkle?  
Je11y6ean_h: no, goofy boy. P, like as in Papadakis. anyway, I’m glad Becca’s coming because I didn’t want to play the fifth wheel all night.  
Je11y6ean_h: wait …  
Ct_yankee_fan: what??  
Je11y6ean_h: did you really just type the word tinkle?

For some reason I’ll never understand, Stoneybrook High School’s homecoming is always a week or two before Thanksgiving. Every other school in the area has their homecoming dance in October, the day after a ‘big’ football game. Because our football team _always_ sucks and hasn’t made the playoffs since the 1980s, we never actually have a game before our dance. 

I don’t get why we even bother to call it homecoming. I mean, who even wants to come back to this shithole once they leave? 

I hadn’t gone to the dance in my first three years of high school. I never saw the point of going to a dance by yourself, and I never could have pictured dragging Byron to the homecoming dance. Part of me didn’t want to go this year either, but it was my last chance. I missed a lot of the teen girl experience while I was hiding over the past three years, and I decided I needed to broaden my horizons a bit…the way I’m always trying to get By to do. 

Somehow, I was having a hard time trying to imagine convincing my friends that they wanted to come with me. Vanessa had declined to go to prom last year, partly because she declared it to be a ‘bourgeois tradition” and partly (mostly, I suspected) because she didn’t have a date. We’d never been able to convince Charlotte to go to any dances in middle school, and Becca had been even worse. 

So imagine my surprise when I discovered that Charlotte and Vanessa had both already made plans when I finally brought it up. For the first time in weeks, the four of us had gathered—at Becca’s this time—on a Friday night. Her parents had gone to New York for the weekend to visit her sister, and Aunt Cecelia was out for the evening, so Becca was babysitting. We’d finally gotten her little brother JP, who was nine, settled in on the couch watching a movie so that we could have the kind of conversation we didn’t want him eavesdropping on. We gathered in the basement with a bowl of potato chips and another of dip. “So homecoming tickets go on sale on Monday,” I announced. I’ve never been good at subtle. 

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Vanessa said. All of the Pikes are really fond of sarcasm, and other than Mallory, Vanessa’s the best at deadpan. Charlotte giggled. 

I ignored them both. “Are any of you planning to go?” I asked, plowing ahead. 

Charlotte was drinking tea; the rest of us had soda. “Vanessa and the guys and I are going to Chez Maurice for dinner beforehand. Bill wants to wear tails and a top hat as an ironic statement, but I’m trying to talk him out of it.” 

I tried to follow that. “So you two _are_ going?” I repeated. 

Vanessa gave me a look. “Of course. We went to the SDS homecoming with P and Bill a couple weeks ago, remember?” 

I did not remember that and it irritated me. “No,” I said, trying to keep the contempt out of my voice, “I’m pretty sure you never told me that, because I would not be having this conversation with you now if you had.” 

Char and Vanessa looked at each other and shrugged, like them forgetting to tell Becca and me stuff was no big deal. “Sorry,” Vanessa said, not sounding like she meant it. 

Becca had been mighty quiet during all of this. I turned to her. “What about you?” I asked. “Are you going?” 

She looked horrified at the thought. “Nope,” she said. “Why would I want to?” 

I sighed but didn’t answer that. I had a feeling she was going to respond that way, but I just really wanted Becca to go. I wasn’t even going to ask Jordan if he wanted to come. He’d already had to make alternate plans for Thanksgiving because he didn’t have the money for a plane ticket home, and I knew how close he was to his mom and how he missed her a lot. It would have been really selfish of me to even think that he’d rather come in for the weekend for a dance than for a family dinner (when we would have been able to find time to be together also.) 

But I also knew that if I was going to be able to convince Becca she wanted to go to the dance, it would be better to do it when it was just the two of us, rather than in front of the other girls. I figured it would be easier to let the subject drop for now. “Are you coming, Haley?” Char asked me. “I figured you must be trying to decide if you brought the topic up.” 

I screwed up my mouth. “I want to go, but I want to make sure I have someone to dance with sometimes. You two aren’t going to spend the whole time making out with your boys, are you?” 

Vanessa laughed. “Well, I can’t promise anything.” 

Charlotte rolled her eyes at Vanessa’s comment. “What do you mean by that?” she said, still looking at me. 

“You know. Last year, at prom, there were these couples that would slow dance to even the fastest of songs.” 

Vanessa eyed me critically. “Like you and Jordan did at that teen club back in Ogunquit.” 

I blushed just a little. “Yeah, I won’t deny that. And I also wouldn’t blame you if either one of you two wanted to do that.” I pushed some loose hair out of my eyes and grabbed some more chips from the bowl. “But I don’t want to go to the dance and meet up with you guys, only to have both of you spend the entire dance like that, while I dance by myself or with people I don’t even like.” 

“That’s why I don’t want to go to the dance either,” Becca piped up. 

“Yeah, but Bec,” I said, turning my attention to her fully, “If you and I both went as singles, we’d always have someone to dance with during fast songs. And we could get drinks and chat during slow numbers.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, but I decided not to push it further. I’d wait until we were alone at lunch on Monday. “Anyway, I may just decide to go even if I have to spend the whole time dancing with all the freshmen boys and making their dates jealous.” 

*** 

I didn’t have a chance to talk to Becca about my plan during lunch. We both were taking the same trig class and she was completely flipping out about the test we’d suffered through that morning. I’d never seen the point in speculating on your grade after you’ve taken a test; what’s done is done and it’s not like you can undo it. But Becca likes to go over every little bit of the test and agonize over what she thinks she got wrong. Her grades are very good but she’s always afraid that this is the test that’s going to tank her average. I’d spent the whole period just trying to talk her down. 

But after we got out of our extracurriculars that afternoon, we decided we needed to have an extra-long, marathon thrift storing session. There are three thrift stores in Lawrenceville and I’d printed off directions to them some time back and stored them in my car. We hadn’t made it out there yet, but we thought today was the day. 

We mostly talked about books and music as we shopped the first two stores, where the selection was pretty lousy. We’d left the stores giggling after making fun of how many copies of _The DaVinci Code_ were on the shelf. 

The third store, however, was set up differently. We had to walk from room to room to even find the books. “There sure are a lot of vintage-looking dresses up in here,” Becca noted as we walked through one of the rooms. 

One of the dresses got my attention. Becca was wearing her backpack—something the woman monitoring the door had frowned about when we’d walked in—and I grabbed her by one of its straps and pulled her to see the dress. “Doesn’t this just scream your name?” I asked. 

The dress had a 1950’s feel, with a halter top and a full skirt. The material was white with large yellow flowers. There was something sensual about the design, but the pattern made it feel a little less sexy. It was thoroughly her; she tended to wear clothes that were right on the edge of trendy but not quite there. This would make her look older and yet not too mature. I could tell Becca was enchanted with the dress but didn’t want to admit it. “Yeah,” she said as she fingered the material for a fifth time, “but what would I do with it?” 

“Goofy,” I said with a smile, “You’d wear it to a dance. If you decided not to go to homecoming, it would make a great prom dress.” I thought this was a pretty good strategic move. Becca had already promised she would go to prom, even if she didn’t have a date. It was the last big event before Char, Vanessa and I graduated that she could, as a junior, actually take part in. 

She let go of the dress, but her expression had changed. “Let’s see what else there is,” she said. I thought she was going to lead me into the next room to look for books, but instead she headed down the rows of dresses. “You’re going to need a dress too, you know!” 

I followed her, wondering if that meant she was actually going to agree to go to homecoming after all. We wandered through rows of dresses that actually seemed (and smelled) like they were from the sixties and seventies and a lot of dresses that were clearly made more recently, either from ancient patterns or inspired by the attire of earlier decades. 

Becca kept pointing out dresses she thought were right for me, but I kept shrugging them off. It almost became a joke. “I’ve always kind of pictured you as a flapper,” she said as she pulled out a beaded number that looked partly-1920s inspired and partly 1980s-inspired. 

I smiled at the dress, guessing it probably weighed twenty pounds. “I don’t know how to do the Charleston,” I commented. 

We were just about to give up when I spotted something among the more casual dresses. It was a 1940s-look dress, with a less-full skirt that stopped right above the knee. It had a Peter Pan collar and was sleeveless. It was covered in a pattern of cherries and had a thin red sash at the middle. I was picturing wearing it with some bobby socks and a pair of saddle shoes I already owned. I held it up to my front, hoping it might actually fit. I’ve joked before that I’m a size negative two because everything’s too big for me, but this looked like it might work. “What do you think, Bec?” I asked. 

She looked me over. “It’s not very formal,” she said thoughtfully. 

“I know, but I love it, and it looks like it might actually be my size.” And anyway, who was I out to impress? I found the tag and looked at it. “And it’s only ten dollars!” 

“Really?” Becca dashed out of my sight, leaving me confused as to what she was doing, but not about the dress. Even if she didn’t think I should wear the dress to homecoming, it was definitely coming home with me. She was back a moment later, holding the dress that I’d pointed out earlier. “This one’s only twenty,” she enthused. “This must be some kind of omen.” 

“Does this mean you’ll go to the homecoming dance?” I asked hopefully. 

“It means I’ll think about it. But like you said, if I decide not to go, it will make a great prom dress.” 

We dug through the books, not finding anything we couldn’t live without. We did, however, find the dressing rooms and try on the dresses. Becca’s was just about perfect, but mine was a little long. “I’m sure you can get it hemmed,” she said, and the two of us grinned at each other as we went to go buy our amazing finds. 

*** 

The next day I got to the lunch table a few minutes before Becca did. I’d already finished my sandwich by the time she appeared with a piece of cardboard pizza, some grizzly looking peas and a dollop of apple sauce. I was ready to dig in to a bag of celery with peanut butter before she showed up. “Hey, Bec,” I said as she slid into the seat next to me, “How did you do on that trig test?” 

She shrugged, not really paying attention. “So-so,” she said mindlessly. I looked at her assessingly for a moment. She squirmed, so I stopped staring at her and spent some time looking at my peanut butter celery. “Haley,” she said after a minute. I looked up questioningly. “Did you really want me to go to the dance with you?” I didn’t reply verbally, just nodded slowly. “If I go, do you think some of the guys will dance with me? I don’t want to look like a loser…or a lesbian.” 

I sighed. I’d had a feeling that was part of the problem. “I dunno, Bec.” She sighed even louder. “I bet, at the least, you could get a dance with P and one with Bill and one with Nick.” I didn’t want to promise her any more than that, especially because I wasn’t really that sure about the first two. I liked P and Bill okay, but I didn’t feel like I knew them that well. Jordan would have danced with Becca if he’d been around. Not for the first time in the past couple days, I missed him terribly. He and Adam always kind of played protective big brother to Margo and Claire’s friends, and Vanessa’s friends had enjoyed the spillover of that when necessary. There’d been a few times when the two of them had walked Becca and Charlotte home from the Pike house in years past when dusk had fallen. 

Becca played with her pizza before breaking it in half with her fingers. “I’m still deciding if I want to go,” she said stubbornly. I just nodded at her again, waiting to hear what sort of other concerns were holding her back. “How much do tickets cost?” she asked after a moment, realizing I wasn’t going to try to bribe or plead with her. 

I shrugged. “I don’t know how much single tickets are. It’s fifteen dollars for a couple.” 

She thought about that. “So it’s probably seven or eight bucks for a single.” I watched her without expression as she mulled over the cost. Becca caught me watching her and gave me a look. “Don’t think this means I’ve decided to go,” she said sharply. 

I stifled a smile. “I know that,” replied. The smile was because I know _Becca_. She’d made up her mind to attend, but she didn’t want to give me the satisfaction of knowing it. Unfortunately for her, I have her all figured out. 

*** 

After lunch is AP English. We had a substitute—and we knew we’d have a substitute—so we’d been given time to work on our perfect world assignments that were due on Friday. I’d already finished my essay and was working on the depiction of my planet. And it was making me surprisingly unhappy. 

I’d taken to heart Jordan’s comment about my perfect place being a bed—but not for the reasons he’d intended. I’d been trying to decide how to frame my perfect planet and thought long and hard about what qualities it needed to have. I ended up deciding that safety and security were highly important, and that there were few places that most people go that feel safer than your bedroom. So my perfect world was a bed, complete with the security and comfort that are implied there. 

I’d bought a doll bed at Becca’s thrift store the week before, and I was putting some finishing touches on it to be indicative of the type world I wanted to live in. I needed to use some scissors to trim a piece of netting, but they were all in use. While I waited, I started looking around at everyone else’s work. 

Many people were also working on their visual depictions. Some people had gone literal and were using basketballs or dodge balls to represent their planet. Others were working with posters or other methods. I started taking a peak at everyone’s work. 

Charlotte is in that class with me, although we have assigned seats in alphabetical order, so she doesn’t sit near me. She’d made a diorama of her planet, which featured a bookcase (Char’s favorite source of knowledge and relaxation), a portal for connecting to other planets, as friends and family are important to her, and a telescope for connecting to other worlds and the future. The boy next to her had put a baseball diamond on his planet, relating sports to the important things in life like cooperation, teamwork and doing your best. (Jordan would have approved.) All around the room, people were creating worlds where groups and teams and friends gathered. 

I was the only one making a world where I shut everyone else out. 

What was wrong with me? If I actually had to live on this imaginary world, I wouldn’t want to shut _everyone_ out. I’d want certain people to come visit me. I just wanted to protect myself from strangers. But if I created a planet where I was fenced in, they’d either have to come live there with me, or they’d have to shout hellos from outside the netting. 

I took the netting and crumpled it up on my desk. That was a terrible way to live your life, but it was exactly what I’d been doing for the past three years. 

Tears stung my eyes, but I wasn’t going to cry right there in front of my entire English class. Instead, I tried to find another method of security I could use on my planet. I pulled out my paper and stared at it for a while. I ended up writing and writing and writing until the bell rang. I was going to have to make a diorama too—of a bedroom with a closet door. 

You have to keep the monsters out somehow. 

*** 

Three surprising things happened during the rest of that week. On Wednesday, Becca and I went to go look at the ticket sales for the dance. “Ten dollars?” she exclaimed. “That’s totally unfair. How come it’s fifteen dollars for a couple and ten dollars for a single?” 

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I guess they don’t get too many people going as singles,” I said. It was bullshit, to be quite frank about it. I was really of the opinion the couples set the prices like that to try to make singles decide not to go. 

Becca’s willingness to actually go to the dance was beginning to waiver. I saw Mr. Martinez, my physics teacher and one of the homecoming dance sponsors, walk over to the table. “C’mon, Bec,” I said, grabbing her by her backpack strap again and dragging her towards the action. “Let’s go ask Mr. Martinez the question you just asked me.” 

But that’s not what I asked him at all. “Mr. Martinez,” I called as he got ready to walk away from the table. 

He turned around and smiled at me. “Miss Braddock. How can I help you?” 

“Do you have to be dating to go to the dance as a couple?” 

Mr. Martinez raised his eyebrow. “Excuse me?” 

I was still holding Becca’s backpack; otherwise, I think she would have crawled into a locker to hide. “Becca and I want to go to homecoming, but we don’t have dates. I don’t think it’s fair that we have to pay twenty dollars between the two of us while those two,” I pointed to Carolyn Arnold and her boyfriend, who were purchasing tickets at that moment, “only have to pay fifteen dollars.” 

Mr. Martinez nodded. “I do agree that that’s kind of unfair,” he noted. 

I was delighted he was even listening to me. “Is there any way we can pay the couple fee but be treated as two singles? I don’t know if you ever listen to the rumor mill…” 

He waved his hand. “Listen, my son goes to this school. Between the kids in my classes and his friends at my house, I hear everything.” He looked at Becca, who had buried her head in her hands, then turned back to me. “Don’t you have a boyfriend, Miss Braddock? I seem to remember you were always with a young man last year.” 

I knew he was referring to By rather than Jordan, because most people made that mistake. “Yes, I do, but he’s off at college. Plays for the University of Florida Gators baseball team!” Mr. Martinez is a big baseball fan, and it’s always good to butter him up. 

“Great! When baseball season starts, I’ll make sure to follow them.” He took a look at the clock overhead. “Listen, ladies. I have to dash now, but when you have the cash in hand to pay, just come see me. I’ll make sure you get the couple fee and the singles treatment. See you in class second hour, Miss Braddock.” 

Becca finally raised her head from her hands. “Why did you tell him that?” she asked in a whisper. 

I pointed to the registration table. Carolyn and her boy had left and no one else was in line. The table was manned by none other than Kerry Bruno and her lackey Demi. “Would you have rather gone to _them_ about it?” I asked her. 

She looked over and I could see her resolve crumbling some more, but she just nodded. “Good point.” 

I was starting to feel bad about pushing her. “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked. 

Becca steeled herself and took a deep breath. “Yeah. I’m going to take your advice. I’m not going to give those girls too much power over me.” 

I was completely amazed. I couldn’t believe she remembered that offhand comment I’d made over a week ago. Not only had she remembered, but she’d also taken it to heart. 

In addition to being surprised, I also felt a little guilty. I was beginning to feel like a crazy person. The more I got to know other people, the less normal and more insane I felt, much like the situation with the planets the day before in English class. I didn’t feel like I was in any place to give anyone advice. But Becca seemed to feel I had some kind of wisdom or knowledge. And I really did think she needed to care less about what people thought, so I just smiled at her, trying to hide my anxiety. She smiled back, trying to hide how tentative she was, and we went our separate ways to class. 

*** 

My mother gave me the second surprise that night at dinner. Daddy was still at work and Matt was at his girlfriend’s house, so it was just the two of us. Mom hadn’t bothered to really cook, instead making grilled cheese and serving it with potato chips. I poured two glasses of milk and the two of us sat down. Before she even started eating, Mom looked over at me. “So…” 

I’d been just about to take a swig of milk, but I lowered my glass. I really hate when Mom starts off that way; it’s usually a sign that something serious is about to follow. “What’s up, Mom?” I asked suspiciously. 

She smiled. “Relax, Haley, I’m not about to start back into your sex life.” I didn’t relax one iota, but I did smile. Probably the last five times we’d spoken alone at the dinner table, it had either been about how I was too young for sex or how I should be prepared for sex. I really think my mother didn’t believe any of my protestations that Jordan and I were not sleeping together. 

“Well, then, if you’re not going to demonstrate how to put a condom on a banana again, what is so important that you must interrupt my grilled cheese to talk about it?” I’m deadly serious about my mother’s grilled cheese. It’s not just a piece of American cheese between two slices of white bread; she makes it with mayonnaise, tomato and three types of cheese. 

She paused, letting me take a bite before she went on. “Your dad and I have decided that we need a vacation. He’s got a conference coming up, not this weekend but the next. I’m going to go with him. We’re leaving Friday afternoon and we’ll be back Monday morning.” 

I nodded, my mouth still full. She watched me silently. I swallowed and washed my bite down with some milk. “Okay,” I said. I knew she wasn’t finished, but I also knew she was waiting for a response. “Have a good time.” 

She took a sip of milk herself. “I’ve already called the Reynoldses and Matt is going to spend the weekend with them. You, on the other hand…” She trailed off and I looked up from my food. “You’re nearly eighteen. I’m going to give you a choice: you can either spend the weekend here alone, or you can find a place to spend the weekend.” 

I actually put my sandwich down. “You’re going to trust me home alone?” I asked. 

“What have you done to _not_ deserve my trust?” she retorted. “Last time we left you home alone for the day, you could have thrown a drunken party. Instead, when your dad and I came home, the house was clean and you and Byron were in your bedroom talking.” Mom snacked on a few chips and then actually licked her fingers. “You could invite Becca or another friend over to spend the night, if you’d like.” 

I shrugged. Despite my thrill at my parents actually allowing me to stay home alone, I didn’t actually want to do that. It was back to my whole issue of security again. I just didn’t feel safe home alone for the whole weekend. “Maybe I’ll ask Becca if I can stay at her place instead.” 

Mom watched me for a moment. “If that’s what you prefer. Do you want me to make the call for you?” 

I knew this was some kind of test or another; I just wasn’t sure why. “No, Mom, I’ll ask.” 

My mother took another bite of sandwich, and then looked at it critically. “It’s better with provolone than with Swiss,” she noted. 

*** 

I ended up not asking Becca if I could spend the night at her house. We’d both brought our money Thursday and I figured I could corner Mr. Martinez after class. The two of us met before school in the hallway, a short distance off from where the dance ticket table stood. She handed me her money, looking around covertly just before she did. I wanted to break down laughing. Becca looked like she were part of a drug deal or some other illegal activity. 

I was just about to make a comment to that effect when someone walked up behind me. “Hi, Becca,” he said shyly. 

I turned aside to view the newcomer, vaguely recognizing the voice but not placing it. He was medium height and a little stocky, with reddish blonde hair and a lot of freckles. His glasses were a little askew on his face, but you could tell that they were normally like that. He was smiling nervously, looking down at his hands rather than at Becca’s face. 

Becca’s eyes widened and she tried to speak, but her mouth didn’t move. I sighed. “Hi, James,” I said, even though he hadn’t addressed me. James Hobart and his family basically lived down the street from me. When they first moved to town, people made fun of them because they had Australian accents. After a while, that actually became their main appeal. But after they’d been in town for about a year, their accents had faded away, and the four Hobart boys (and their little sister, born in the U.S.) began to just blend in. James was in National Honor Society and the band with Becca. 

James smiled back at me. “Hey, Haley,” he replied. He leaned against the locker a short distance away and shot me a pointed glance. 

I’m no dummy—I knew exactly what was going on. “I’ll see you at lunch, Bec,” I said, shouldering my bag with our money in one pocket. 

Becca’s eyes went wide. I could read her perfectly. She didn’t want me to leave her alone with James. But I saw exactly what was about to happen, and I didn’t want to be the one to stand in the way of it. 

I didn’t buy tickets to the dance, and I didn’t see Becca again until lunch. I was eating a salad when she came up with one of the few hot lunches that wasn’t totally repulsive—spaghetti and meat sauce. “So what happened?” I asked Becca. 

She sat down and glared at me for a moment. “Thanks for walking away this morning,” she said. I’d never heard her be sarcastic before. 

“You’re welcome,” I replied as if she’d been serious. Becca grimaced. “So what did James want?” I asked her again. She sighed and put her head down on her hands, mumbling something that I didn’t catch. “Excuse me?” I asked her. “What was that?” 

“I said,” she repeated, raising her head just a bit, “He asked me to the dance.” 

“And?” 

“And _what_?” “Becca, don’t be difficult.” She was starting to annoy me. “Are you going with him or not?” 

She sighed. “Yeah. I didn’t know how to tell him no.” 

“You wanted to tell him no?” 

She leaned on the table. “You and I were supposed to go together. And it’s not like I’m in love with James or anything.” 

I laughed and she eyed me quizzically. “James is a nice guy. You don’t have to be in love with a guy to go on a date with him.” 

“Yeah, but you love Jordan.” 

I smiled. “Jordan and I have been dating for more than six months. Yeah, I love him. But I wasn’t in love with him when we first started dating. And how many guys did I go to dances with in middle school? I definitely didn’t love any of them.” 

She was unconvinced. “Haley, what am I going to do? I’ve never been on a date before. I don’t know what to say or how to act.” 

She sounded like Byron and it made me want to laugh. I refrained for her sake. “Bec. It’s not hard. Be yourself. Say what you want to say and act how you want to act. And if he doesn’t like you, then you don’t go out with him again.” 

Here I was giving her advice again. I apparently just couldn’t help myself. She just shook her head and changed the subject a bit. “So if you have to go to the dance by yourself, are you still going to go?” she asked. 

That was the question. 

*** 

I wasn’t mad at Becca by any stretch of the imagination, but I decided that maybe it was a better idea if I spent the weekend with someone else. I had to work Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, so I figured it would be best to organize a bed right away. We were having another dance rehearsal for glee club and I was supposed to be warming up, but I decided to make a quick phone call first. 

I didn’t expect anyone to be home at the Pike house, but Claire answered the phone. “Hi Myriah!” she said excitedly. 

I stifled a giggle. “No, Claire. It’s Haley.” 

“Haley?” she repeated, sounding astonished. “Why are _you_ calling? You know that Byron and Jordan aren’t home.” 

“Actually, I wanted to speak to your mom. Is she home?” 

“She is!” Claire was in a chipper mood. I soon found out why. “She took me to the dentist this afternoon, and guess what! He says I don’t need braces.” I couldn’t see her, but I knew she had to be beaming. “I’m the only one in the family.” 

“That’s great, Claire! Can I talk to your mom, now?” 

Mrs. Pike came to the phone soon after and instantly agreed to me spending the weekend. “That’s the weekend of homecoming, isn’t it?” she said. “That’ll work out great. You can carpool with Vanessa, or if she’s going out somewhere first, I can give you a ride with Nick and Margo.” 

I didn’t bother telling her I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. I was thinking maybe Claire and her braces-less mouth and I could spend the evening playing board games instead. 

*** 

I thought Vanessa would be equally agreeable to me spending the weekend with her; after all, she’d spent the summer complaining that I hadn’t spent enough time with her. But she turned instantly cranky when I told her about it during the only class we had together—P.E. “Oh, great, she said, nearly whining. “I just got my own bedroom, and now I have to share it again.” 

We were supposed to be practicing our awesome volleyball serves, but Vanessa was holding the ball and not doing anything with it. I wrinkled my nose at her, both because of her comment and because Mrs. Abernathy was watching us. “I can always go sleep with Margo and Claire,” I pointed out. 

“Yeah, right,” she retorted. “More likely we’ll find you sleeping in Jordan’s bed, hoping it smells like him.” 

I was about to give her a smart-alecky comeback, but instead I grinned. “Or I could go spend the night with Nick,” I suggested. 

Vanessa relaxed and actually laughed. “Now that’s a scary thought,” she announced as she finally served the volleyball. 

*** 

I went ahead and bought a single ticket to the dance that afternoon. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to go, but as far as I could see, my options were limited. I’d already requested the evening off work, so I could either go to the dance, or I could hang out at the Pikes’ house all evening by myself. Even Claire had plans for the evening—a sleepover at Myriah’s. 

The next week flew by in a hurry and soon it was Friday again, the day before the dance. I said goodbye to Matt before his school bus arrived; he was going to spend the next two nights at his friend Blake’s. I was going to go to school and then stop back home for my weekend bag and my dance things. I could have just left my dress and shoes and makeup at home and gone back to my bedroom to get ready, but something about that made me extremely uneasy. 

Vanessa had already planned a date with P for Friday night and I didn’t have to work, so I didn’t know what to do with myself when I first got to the Pikes’. I’d pulled out my homework and set out the foldaway bed in Vanessa’s bedroom. I figured I’d get started on my assignments so that I didn’t have to scramble through them on Sunday. But after I made the bed, I realized that I just didn’t want to start my work just yet. There was something I needed to do first. 

Mr. and Mrs. Pike were still at work and Nick and Vanessa were both out with friends. Margo had cheerleading practice and Claire had stayed after school at SMS for something or another. Mrs. Pike had told me to make myself at home, so I turned on the computer in the living room and logged into instant messenger. 

It was still early, and I wasn’t sure exactly when By’s last class of the day let out. I was pleased to see that he was online. “Hellllllllllllo!” I posted by way of greeting. 

By responded with a smiley face. “Hey, Hay,” he wrote. “I’m talking to your (other) favorite guy in another screen.” 

“Ooh, you 2 talking about me?” 

“Actually,” he replied. “We were. We were both just saying how much Thanksgiving is going to suck without you.” 

My breath stuck in my throat. I’d known Jordan wasn’t coming home for Thanksgiving—he was going to his roommate’s place in some town called Frostproof. (I’d already joked that I wanted to move to any place that was actually frost-proof.) But I’d still thought By was going to make it home somehow; he hadn’t told me otherwise. I swallowed back the urge to cry, glad he couldn’t see me. “where are you going for thanksgiving?” I asked. 

He didn’t respond right away. “I haven’t decided yet,” he finally replied. “I got two invitations. Alizah is going to her grandmother’s in South Carolina, and she said I could come and share a bedroom with her ‘little cousins.’ I find that thought kind of scary.” I snorted when I read that. “Or Paul said I could come stay with his family. They’re not too well off, though, and I worry about putting them out having to feed me.” A longer pause followed. “I’m thinking I might just stay in the dorms over the holiday.” 

I realized he was just as unhappy about the situation as I was. “oh, By. don't do that. either suck it up and sleep with the little cousins, or go to Paul’s and bring something.” 

“Like what?” 

“you can buy stuff pretty much already made at the grocery store. or get your mom to send you a recipe.” 

The back door opened and I listened, waiting to see if I could figure out who was there based upon the sounds. I can do that at my own home, but I had no clue who this was. I didn’t want to surprise anyone, so I called out, “Hello?” 

“Hello to you, too,” responded out a voice I couldn’t immediately place. He wasn’t a Pike. I walked over to the kitchen only to be confronted by P. “Hi,” he repeated, looking surprised to see me. “When did you move in here?” 

I was surprised to see him, too. Vanessa had taken the Pike-mobile over to meet him at _his_ house. I tried not to show it, though. “Oh, didn’t you know?” I said lightly. “Jordan and I got married. I’m now a member of the family.” 

He laughed. “Is Vanessa home?” 

“Nope. I think she’s at your house.” 

P’s eyes widened. “I’d better head back over there soon then. My sister Sari has a role in her fifth grade class play, and she’s been cornering every person she can find to practice her ‘acting.’ If I don’t rescue Vanessa soon, she’ll be stuck all night.” I chuckled. I’d done the same thing at that age. “We’re heading over to the Rosebud with Bill and Charlotte and a few of my other friends. We tend to go there every Friday afternoon. You and Becca are always welcome to join us.” 

I made a hideous face; I know I did. Why had Vanessa and Charlotte never told me that? P cocked his head to one side and watched me, trying to figure me out. I went a different (but still true) direction. “No, thanks,” I replied. “Jordan worked there last summer, and he always came home smelling like hamburger. I can’t even go near that place these days.” I used to love cheeseburgers, but I hadn’t had one since about June. The smell of one cooking now made me nauseous. 

“Smell make you miss your hubby too badly?” 

I smiled at his continuation of my joke. “Something like that.” 

“Well, Mrs. Pike, I’d better leave you to your pining, before Vanessa is a damsel in distress in need of rescuing.” He bowed before me and I rolled my eyes. I could see why Vanessa liked him so much. 

I waved as he retreated through the back door, marveling at the fact that he’d just walked straight into the Pikes’ house. Even I didn’t do that most of the time. “See you tomorrow at the dance,” I called. He bowed again and then was gone. 

I hadn’t told By I was walking away from the computer, but he’s used to that out of me. He sometimes says he thinks I have ADD. He’d posted a commentary about having dinner at the cafeteria and logged off in my absence, but another screen had popped. “oh, Jellybean,” Jordan had posted. 

I smiled. I’d picked out my screen name when I was eleven and being called jellybean (as my dad did occasionally) still seemed cool. I’d had to spell it with numbers because someone had already taken the name I’d wanted. 

“Yes, my love?” I replied. P’s fake courtliness had worn off on me a little. Jordan just responded with a heart. I smiled bigger; he was in a silly mood. “did you know we got married?” I asked. 

*** 

Jordan had made me tell him all the details of our alleged ‘wedding’ by the time Claire got home. She obviously knew I was going to be there, because she didn’t seem surprised to see me. On the contrary, she walked in and started babbling in my ear right away. “Hi Haley! Are you going to the dance tomorrow? Can I help you get ready? Margo always says I can help her, but she never actually lets me. She gets mad when I try. Can I see your dress? I bet you look really pretty when you’re all dressed up.” 

I posted a response to Jordan. “gotta go. my sister in law is demanding my attention.” 

He was typing. I turned to Claire. “Let me say goodbye to Jordan and I’ll show you my dress,” I told her. She just nodded, but she was bouncing excitedly in anticipation. 

Jordan obviously didn’t know Claire was standing right there in front of the computer when he sent his reply. “you know,” he wrote, still (I hope) being silly, “I’d marry you for real in a heartbeat. just say the word.” 

Claire leaned over me and read the words on the screen. “Pee-yew!” she exclaimed. “He is so _gross_ when he gets sappy. How do you put up with him?” 

I smirked. “Someday, Claire, you might want a guy to say things like that to you.” 

“Never. I’ll become a lesbian if any guy ever talks to me like that.” 

I resisted the urge to laugh at her as I logged off instant messenger. “Believe me, girls say stuff like that too.” 

“Disgusting. I’m going to have to learn how to have sex with myself, I guess.” 

Sometimes, the things that come out of Claire’s mouth surprise me. I would have never joked about becoming a lesbian or anything of the sort at her age. But then again, I didn’t have seven older brothers and sisters to teach me stuff. I didn’t respond to that comment, because I was pretty sure she was just trying to get a rise out of me. “Here’s my dress,” I said by way of distraction. 

It worked. “Oh, it’s really pretty,” Claire exclaimed. “What else are you wearing?” I pulled out my saddle shoes and she made a face. “Both Vanessa and Margo are wearing heels. Why are you wearing those shoes?” 

I shrugged at her. “They match my dress.” 

“No, no, no,” she insisted. “They’re not right for a dance. Wait here. I’ll bring you a pair of heels.” With that, she rushed off. 

I watched her as she dashed away. I’d picked out those shoes because they had the 40s feel I was going for and because they were comfortable. I’d kicked my heels off at prom about five minutes in and hadn’t put them back on until we’d left. It was too cold for that in November. 

More than that, I wondered why Claire was so interested in me, and I realized it had a lot to do with the comment she’d made about Margo never letting her help. Mallory had been away at school since Claire was in kindergarten, and Vanessa wasn’t exactly the type to put up with Claire following her around and ‘improving’ her outfit. Margo and Claire were very close, but they also fought a lot. I could tell that Claire’s behavior could get annoying very quickly, so I didn’t blame her older sisters for ignoring and neglecting her. But I also knew she just wanted to feel like she was part of the older girls; that’s why I’d always loved going over to Becca’s in middle school and hanging out with her older sister. 

Claire returned with not one but four pairs of heeled sandals. “I didn’t know what size you wore,” she said. 

I eyed all the shoes. “Where’d you get these from?” I asked. 

“They’re all hand-me-downs,” she admitted. “When my sisters don’t want their shoes anymore, they give them to me. I’m not sure I’ll ever fit into a size nine, though,” she said, holding up one pair. They must have been Vanessa’s; she has the largest feet of her sisters. 

“I certainly won’t,” I commented. 

“What size do you wear?” 

“Somewhere between a four and a five,” I admitted. 

“None of these are going to work,” Claire said with a sigh, dropping them all on Vanessa’s floor. “Even _I_ wear a six!” she exclaimed. 

I shrugged at her. “I just have tiny feet.” Claire’s a bit shorter than I am, but she’s not done growing. I think she’s going to end up a little shorter than her sisters. Vanessa and Mal are both about five-four, and Margo’s slightly taller. 

Claire looked thoughtful. “I have an idea,” she said, dashing out of the room again. She returned with a pair of black strappy heeled sandals and a plastic case. “I wore these to a wedding a couple years ago,” she said as she dropped the shoes at my feet. 

My heart sank. I’d been trying to find a nice way of getting out of wearing the shoes, and I’d figured that if she didn’t find a pair that fit me, it would be pretty easy. These looked like they were just the right size. “Thanks, Claire,” I said, trying not to sound as disappointed as I felt. 

“You’re welcome. I brought my makeup. Can I practice on you?” 

*** 

I spent the rest of the evening Friday and on through Saturday being Claire’s guinea pig. Margo came and joined us for a while Friday evening. By that point, I’d had my makeup done three times already. Claire and Margo had gotten silly and decided they were going to work together on my face. By the time Vanessa came home, I looked like the Bride of Frankenstein. Vanessa took one look, shook her head, and left Margo and Claire’s room without saying a word. 

Saturday morning I showered and then showed Claire how to set my hair in pin curls. She liked the idea so much that she then took a shower and I set her hair as well. “We’ll match,” she exclaimed. 

Claire also insisted on painting my nails for me—something I hadn’t done since I was about her age. She wanted to use sparkly purple polish until I pointed out that it didn’t match my outfit. She ended up searching the web for information on how people did their nails back ‘in the day’ before giving up and painting them a red that matched the sash on the dress. 

While this was all going on, Vanessa drove off to Charlotte’s. I’d been more than a little hurt to discover she was taking her dress and doing all her dance preparations there. Later, they were meeting the boys at Bill’s house before the four of them went to Chez Maurice; I wouldn’t see Vanessa again until I got to the dance. Margo had wandered off to do her own dressing and primping. Nick was sitting at the computer when I came out half an hour before the dance started, my makeup done and my nails painted and dried. I was dressed except for my shoes and coat; I was just waiting for Claire to come out and remove the bobby pins from my hair so I could comb it and hope it had turned out okay. Nick saw me and whistled. “You know, if my brother hadn’t gotten to you first…” he said mischievously. 

Nick and I had formed a kind of grudging friendship ever since he’d quasi-asked Becca out a couple weeks ago. It was kind of a brother-sister thing, similar to the relationship I had with By, only less close. Honestly, it’s the kind of friendship I’d have expected to have with him if hadn’t been so odd the past few years. I smacked him on the shoulder. “You mind your manners or I’ll tell your big brother on you,” I told him. 

“Which one?” He stood up from the computer. He was still wearing the jeans and t-shirt he’d had on all day. “You should leave your hair like that,” he said. “Make a statement.” 

“And you should go dressed like that. Make a slob statement.” Nick laughed. “So what girl did you con into going to this shindig with you?” 

“Zoe Rogers. She’s a sophomore.” I must have looked blank because he kept describing. “Long, long hair, cheerleader? She’s friends with Margo. I suggested we double date, but Margo nearly died at the idea.” I wasn’t up on the sophomores, especially cheerleaders, but I just nodded. “Margo’s actually going with Zoe’s cousin Chris.” He looked at his watch. “I probably should go get changed unless I want to make that slob statement. Save me a dance, Haley?” 

I shrugged at him as Claire came into the room with a giant comb and a bottle of super-hold hairspray. “Maybe. I don’t know if I can trust you.” He laughed again. 

*** 

I didn’t end up dancing with Nick that night, or too many other guys. Mrs. Pike dropped the three of us in her care off about a block from the school, at Margo’s pleading. Claire was also in the car, on her way to Myriah’s for her sleepover. Margo didn’t want to be seen getting out of a station wagon driven by her mom, with her little sister inside. Mrs. Pike had rolled her eyes good-naturedly and given in to her daughter’s demands. 

I’d been wrong about it being too cold inside to take off my shoes. The dance had only just started when I walked inside, but it was already about ninety-degrees in the gym. I looked around but didn’t see any of my friends. I staked out a table, hoping the others would join me there and dropped my coat on a chair and kicked Claire’s shoes off underneath it. They’d turned out to be just a little too small and they were killing my feet. I sat down, waiting for Becca or one of the other girls to show up. And I waited. And waited. 

I got up and went to get myself some punch, leaving my purse hiding under my coat. I stood alone, feeling like an idiot at the snack table as everyone around me was chatting animatedly. I saw Becca come in…surrounded by a whole group of people from the band. I waved at her, but I don’t think she even saw me. I could have gone over and joined them; I would have done that back in the day. But I didn’t want to intrude on her date or the group of friends she’d made that didn’t include me. I knew what it was like to be the youngest in a group of friends and be left behind when everyone went off to college. Vanessa, Char and I would be doing that at the end of the school year. I didn’t want to keep Becca from the friends she needed to have after we graduated. Instead, I took my punch back to my seat. 

I sat for about ten minutes before I made up my mind not to spend the whole evening in the corner. It was time to pretend I was middle-school Haley again: pert and pretty and friendly and brainless. I walked around, saying hi to anyone I recognized and even some I didn’t. I even danced with a few of the younger boys I remembered from homework club along with their dates in a big group. 

I’d been dancing with Danielle’s little brother Greg for a few minutes when Charlotte and Vanessa finally showed up, nearly an hour into the dance. They’d played a few slow-ish songs during that time, but I’d just found someone who wasn’t dancing and started up a conversation about something. Anything. 

After my friends arrived, I thought maybe things would start to improve. I saw the four of them head over to a table in the corner, but by the time I’d excused myself from Greg and his friends and made my way over there, they were gone. I looked around, hoping to spot P (who was fairly tall) among the crowd, but no luck. And although I consider myself a decent actress, I was having a hard time pretending to be happy and well-adjusted. 

I found the chair where I’d left my stuff; the chairs around it were taken by a bunch of kids I didn’t know. I plopped back down in the seat and crossed my arms in front of my body, ready for a serious pout. I was definitely in a glass-half-empty kind of mood. Just when I thought that things couldn’t get any worse, someone came by and emptied the glass entirely. 

The DJ (one of the teachers, because that’s how lame Stoneybrook is) announced that we were about to slow things down. I stayed in my seat; I didn’t see any point in even getting up. I didn’t have anyone to dance with. But that was a temporary thing, because the song then began playing and I just wanted to get the hell out of there. 

I know it’s clichéd, but Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls was kind of my song with Jordan. I’m not sure he’s knows it’s our song, but I don’t think he’d argue if I explained it. We’d been sitting in his car one evening back in early July. We were actually sitting, not making out in the backseat like we might have in my car. (The backseat of the Pike-Mobile is basically a garbage dump.) And we were just quietly listening to the radio and sipping frozen lemonade. Iris had come on the radio, and Jordan had turned to me and started singing along with the radio. He doesn’t really sing any better than his brothers and sisters do, but he’s got a better sense of pitch. I’d never really liked the song before that, but every time I heard it now, I pictured him singing while looking into my eyes. 

I know that a lot of teenagers feel the same way about that song, because it speaks straight to teenaged angst. I was already crabby; that song playing as couples danced was the final straw. I shoved Claire’s shoes on my feet and threw my coat on my shoulders and rushed from the gym. I stepped outside by the back door, which no adults were monitoring. It’s supposed to be locked from the outside, but someone had propped it open with a rock. I pulled my coat tight around myself; it was below freezing and the wind was whipping. A few kids were in the quad beyond the patio I was standing on, which had been the smoking patio back in the day. Sure enough, there was a girl leaned up against the building, smoking. I walked a short distance away from her and did the same. She was facing slightly away from me, blowing her smoke in the opposite direction. I know she had to have heard the door open, as it wasn’t exactly quiet, and she confirmed that a short time later. “Smoke?” she offered. 

I shook my head. “No thanks.” The girl shrugged and I finally got a good look at her. It was Demi, the girl who had been manning the ticket booth with Kerry. “Just couldn’t make it through the whole dance without a cigarette?” I asked, a little sarcastically. 

She smiled faintly. “Nope. I just had to get the hell out of there. My date is pretty…grabby. I’m gonna knee him in the balls if he puts his hands on my ass again.” She took another drag on her cigarette. “I guess that’s what I get for letting someone set me up.” 

I was surprised Demi was even talking to me. “Oh, good,” I said with a sigh. “I thought I was the only one having a lousy time.” 

She watched me seriously as I pulled my coat tighter around my middle. My teeth were chattering. “No offense, but why’d you even come to the dance?” 

I was wondering that myself. “I wanted to pretend I was a normal girl for an evening. See what it was like.” 

Demi’s eyes flashed briefly. “Normal?” 

“You’ve heard the word before. Just like everyone else.” 

She stubbed out her cigarette butt. “You mean, straight?” I sighed and slumped down the wall, looking away from her. “You are a lesbian, right? I mean, I’ve never heard you deny it.” 

I looked at her over my shoulder. “I have a boyfriend. He’s off at college in Florida.” I carefully kept my voice neutral. Demi kept watching me. “I don’t deny it because whenever I say that, it sounds like I’m making shit up.” I fished my cell phone out of my purse and opened it up, flashing the background photo of me and Jordan that Matt had taken that summer, just a couple days before we’d briefly broken up. 

Demi grunted. “I guess you’re right about that. Kerry and Sara love to find people who deny the stories about them and keep tormenting them. The more someone denies stuff, the more stories that get spread.” She fished another cigarette out of her beaded clutch and lit it. “Sometimes, I look at my friends when they’re gossiping and think, ‘What the hell am I doing hanging out with these bitches?’” 

She shook her head. “I can’t really answer that.” Demi took another long drag on her cigarette before she looked back at me. “It’s nearly halfway through my senior year. I’ve been friends with them since I moved here in seventh grade. What else am I supposed to do?” 

I could understand that. I think a lot of us were sort of in a holding pattern at this point. We were putting in college applications, hoping to find something better on the other side of graduation. I was beginning to feel that Vanessa felt the same way about me as Demi did about Kerry and Sara. “I get it, believe it or not.” She looked over at me. “It’s nice to know that not all of your friends are completely worthless as human beings.” 

She smiled, just a little. “And it’s nice to know that not everyone will hold the actions of my worthless friends against me.” She stubbed out her cigarette again. “Are you heading back inside?” I shook my head at her. Hiding out at the Pikes had to be preferable to going back inside and being ignored and avoided. 

*** 

I decided to walk back to the Pikes by the back way, instead of taking the main streets. If I’d walked the other way, I would have gotten to my house first, and then I would have been tempted to just go home and spend the rest of the weekend alone. That no longer sounded like the bad idea it had originally, but I didn’t want to worry the Pikes. At the very least, I needed to head back to their house and let them know what was going on. 

By the time I got there, my bare lower legs were frozen solid. I went in through the back door, which was usually kept unlocked. Mrs. Pike was sitting at the kitchen table, working at something. The pile of papers looked like bills, and my dad always gets crabby when he pays bills, so I figured I’d just go to Vanessa’s room and stay out of her way. But she looked up at me, and although she seemed shocked to see me, she smiled. “Haley! You surprised me,” she said. “You’re back really early.” 

I shrugged and, although it was against my instincts, I plopped down in a chair near her, careful to avoid her piles of paperwork. “I got bored,” I said, drumming my fingers on the edge of the table. One of my nails was already chipped in several spots. 

“How on earth can you get bored at the homecoming dance?” she asked, putting her pen down. Just as I suspected, I was about to get roped into a real conversation. 

I looked down at my feet and removed my shoes. My ankles were swollen just from the walk home, and they were throbbing like crazy. I didn’t make eye contact as I replied. “Dances are for couples. Vanessa was off with P and Char and Bill. Even Becca had a date—her first ever—and they were hanging out with _his_ friends and _their_ dates. There’s only so many times you can slow dance with gawky freshmen and I’d reached my limit.” 

Mrs. Pike nodded, looking serious and a little sad. “I guess I can see that.” I looked up at her, trying to read her expression beyond that. “Is everything okay with you?” 

I always get wary when adults ask me that. “Of course,” I replied slowly. “Why do you ask?” 

Her expression hadn’t changed a bit, and she appeared to be choosing her words extremely carefully. “You seem more…subdued…than I’m used to seeing you.” 

I didn’t want to tell her how jealous I’d been of all the couples at the dance, especially the ones that had been dating for a while. I didn’t even want to tell Jordan that, because I know he felt bad that he hadn’t been able to go with me. So I said that without ever using the words. “Well,” I started, “Right now I’m wallowing in self-pity about having to go to the dance alone instead of with my favorite date.” 

Mrs. Pike finally stopped looking so serious. “I’m glad to hear you say that.” I threw her a curious look. “I assumed that was pretty much how you were feeling, and I wanted to make sure that you weren’t mad at Jordan for not trying to get here or anything.” 

“No, not at all. I would have loved for him to come to the dance with me, but I also know that he was never going to be able to make it. I know how important I am to him, but he’s broke and anyway, school needs to come first.” I picked up one high heel and held it in my hand. “I feel kinda awkward telling you this,” I admitted. 

And we were back to surprise. “Why? We’ve talked like this before.” 

We had, once or twice. And I couldn’t even count how many times I’d talked to Becca’s mom (and her older sister Jessi) about the sort of things I could _never_ tell my mom. It’s nice to get an adult perspective and not turn around and instantly get grounded, and I’d always known that Mrs. Ramsey and Mrs. Pike weren’t going to call my mom unless I admitted something really atrocious. “I know,” I told her, “but that was when I was just Vanessa’s friend. If I said something inappropriate, you’d just think, ‘Thank God my daughter’s not that screwed up.’ Now, if I say something like that, you might think, ‘What kind of nut has my son gotten involved with?’” 

She chuckled. “Haley, you don’t sound nutty. You sound like someone trying to muddle through a relationship for the first time. That’s hard any time. Add to it the fact that you’re a teenager _and_ you’re doing a long-distance relationship. I think it’s perfectly okay to be lonely or wish he were here.” 

I knew she was right, but that didn’t make me feel any better. “I feel crazy most of the time, though.” 

Mrs. Pike put a hand on my back. “That’s totally and completely normal. It’s called life, sweetheart. We all feel that way sometimes.” 

She sounded a lot like Byron when she said that (although he never would have called me sweetheart. Loudmouth, maybe. Doofus, definitely. But sweetheart, no.) For some reason, that made me want to cry. 

I wiped at my eyes and looked down at the shoe in my lap. “Vanessa and Charlotte say they’re my friend, but they don’t really act like it. I feel like I just annoy them most of the time. That’s the only reason I can think that they don’t tell me things and leave me out of stuff.” She made a sympathetic sound and I went on. “Becca is great, but I don’t want her to rely on me too much, because she keeps asking me for advice, and what do I know about anything?” I knew I was babbling, but I had to get it out. “It took a lot of persuading to get her to go to the dance at all and even more to go with James. I basically had to convince her that you don’t have to marry the first guy who asks you out. If that were the case, I’d be Mrs. Rodowsky these days, and _that_ is a scary thought.” 

Mrs. Pike smiled at me. “Can I tell you something?” she asked. I didn’t reply and she took my silence as a lack of complaint and barreled on. “You said you don’t want to give Becca advice because you don’t know anything. And if I were speaking to most teenagers—the ones who thought they know everything—I’d probably agree with that point of view. But I’ve known Becca about as long as I’ve known you, and I’ve known Byron all his life, of course. Neither one of them is stupid, and yet they both go to you for advice, and keep coming back for more. Obviously, your advice can’t be that far off track.” She got up and went to the fridge. “This sounds like an ice cream kind of night. You in?” 

I looked at her skeptically for a moment, but then nodded. “Thanks, Mrs. Pike,” I said, wiping at my eyes again. 

She’s a fast scooper; the ice cream was ready to go. “Haley, you’re nearly grown and you’re practically a member of the family. You can call me Dee, if you want.” 

The idea of that freaked me out. “I’ll keep that in mind.” 

The smirk she provided said she knew I wasn’t going to take her up on her offer. “Hot fudge or caramel?” she asked, holding up two jars of ice cream topping. 

“What kind of ice cream is it?” 

Mrs. Pike quickly looked at the bowls. “Butter pecan.” 

“Neither.” She gave me a quizzical look. “I’m kind of an ice cream purist. I only put toppings on plain flavors like chocolate or vanilla.” 

“Oh, Haley,” she said with a shake of her head. “If you’re going to survive in this house, you’re going to have to get used to strange food combinations.” 

*** 

It was only eight-thirty when I excused myself from the kitchen and found my way to Vanessa’s room. I’d never heard the Pike house be so quiet on a Saturday evening before, and I took advantage of it. I did something I never thought I’d do on a Saturday night: I completed all my homework and even read ahead in my physics textbook. 

The dance ended at ten-thirty, and at eleven, I thought I might go to bed. Margo’s ‘dance curfew’ was midnight, while Nick and Vanessa didn’t have to be home until two. I figured if I were in a deep sleep by the time Vanessa stumbled in, she wouldn’t wake me up. Then we wouldn’t have to have any awkward conversation. 

But sleep just didn’t come. My mind was racing in several different directions. I wondered if any of my favorite guys were on instant messenger at that hour. I wanted to talk to _someone_ about my evening. So I rolled out of bed and wandered, in my pajamas, into the living room. 

Neither Jordan nor By nor even Jeff was online, but Becca was. A message from her popped up almost as soon as I logged in. “Haley!” she exclaimed. “I missed you at the dance tonight!” 

I didn’t tell her that I was a giant crab and that I’d been avoiding her. “I got a headache  & went home early,” I typed. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. 

“That’s too bad. James was hoping you’d come hang out with us and his friends. He wanted you to tell the story about the time you started that war between the boys and the girls. Remember that?” I did remember that. I’d started a prank war with the boys back in fifth grade by putting a whoopee cushion on someone’s chair, but I eventually changed sides and ended up leading the boys to victory. Most of my friends hadn’t spoken to me for several weeks afterward because I’d ‘betrayed my gender’…and that’s what really stuck with me about it. “Anyway, I guess the dance wasn’t so bad, even without you,” she continued when I didn’t reply. 

“did you and James have a good time?” I asked. I began to regret leaving without at least stopping by to say hi to her. 

“Define good,” she replied with a sigh. I know that she sighed because the next thing she typed was the word _sigh_ , complete with half a dozen Is. I had to smile; Becca is nothing if not dramatic. “I know I told you I said yes to James because I didn’t know how to say no, but really, I think I just wanted to feel like less of a nerd and more like every other girl for the night.” 

Boy, did I ever understand _that_. Hadn’t I just said the same thing to Demi earlier that evening? “And did it work?” I asked, hoping her answer was more positive than mine. 

“Nope. I was just a nerd in a fancy dress.” 

I tried really hard not to burst into laughter. I was pretty sure Mr. and Mrs. Pike weren’t asleep—I could hear them talking upstairs—but that didn’t mean they needed me chortling like a maniac on their ground floor. “and what do you think of James now?” I asked. 

“He’s okay,” Becca answered. “We’re going to hang out some more, as part of a group. Not a date or anything. He said you’re welcome to come with us any time.” 

I smiled; James was already a better friend than I felt like Vanessa or Charlotte was being recently. “Sounds like fun,” I commented, but I needed just one more detail before I could agree. “They don’t hang out at the Rosebud, do they?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the REAL Zoe Rogers, plus Becca and Nick (and their (and my) cousin Chris). The family relationship was just too good not to use. I love you guys.


	3. Everybody's Doing It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I celebrate Thanksgiving by fighting with Charlotte a little bit

You’re invited!  
Sunday, November 28th  
2:30 p.m.  
Kilbourne residence, 1209 McLelland St. Stoneybrook

“Want to hear something absolutely disgusting?” I asked Byron the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. He’d decided to go to Paul’s house for the holiday, and the two of them were being picked up in half an hour. I was honored he was willing to talk to me on the phone in the meantime. 

“Gross, vomit-inducing disgusting, or interesting and intriguing kind of disgusting?” he replied. He knows I use the word both ways. 

“The former for me; probably more of the latter for you.” He didn’t reply, so I knew he was going to let me speak. “Matt and his girlfriend are having sex.” 

By paused. “So?” he said after a minute. 

“So?” I repeated. “By, this is my little brother. He’s not even sixteen! And he’s been sleeping with his girlfriend for almost six months now. It’s totally sickening.” 

“How’d you even find that out?” he asked. That was a good question. Matt had been given the punishment of his lifetime: he was grounded “at the court’s discretion.” In other words, my parents would decide when enough was enough. They (and I) had come home homecoming weekend to discover that Matt and his friend Blake, who were supposed to be at Blake’s house for the weekend, had instead thrown a massive party at our house. There were liquor bottles everywhere, and somehow, the television had been destroyed. I’d gone into my bedroom to discover it in disarray. Not only had some ‘action’ clearly occurred on my bed, but I’d been robbed. Someone had taken my IPod and over a hundred dollars. 

So much for your bedroom being the one safe place. I felt almost as violated about it as I did about my rape. 

“Um,” I finally replied to By. “Matt’s grounded. No IM, no internet, no cell phone. When he gets bored he gets chatty. And…share-y. I’m learning all sorts of things about him I just didn’t want to know.”

By laughed. “That sounds like Paul when he drinks. He’s got a really low tolerance and he just starts talking and talking. A couple weeks ago, after midterms, he had a couple of beers, and then he explained way more about female anatomy than I _ever_ wanted to know.” 

“What does that even mean?” I asked him. I was tooling around the kitchen, putting together bowls of snacks. Becca was coming over and we were going to have a marathon session of Gilmore Girls on the one working television. “Didn’t you take biology and health already anyway?” 

More chuckles. “They didn’t teach about erogenous zones at SHS, Hay,” he pointed out. 

I shuddered, less at the thought of By’s discomfort at hearing his friend’s stories of his sexual triumphs than the idea of old Miss Allen, who taught health (or as she liked to call it, ‘hygiene’) teaching about the clitoris and g-spot. “Yeah, that’s pretty much something you never needed to know, huh?” 

“I’m still not entirely certain that Paul’s not trying to turn me hetero,” By joked. “If I come back from this trip talking about ‘hooters’ and ‘pussy’ and stuff, arrange for a deprogrammer for me, okay? I’ll pay you back someday when I have money.” 

I laughed. “By, you’ll never have the money to pay me back for _that_. Plus, what if I want to leave you straight for some reason?” He snorted. “There might be benefits in that for me. Have you ever thought about that?” 

“I’m a little scared as to what those benefits might be,” By replied good-naturedly. 

I thought about By’s statement about Paul wanting to turn him straight and about how there’s so much of traditional teen culture that just really doesn’t apply to him. “By, do you ever feel like you’re missing out on something?” I asked vaguely. “Like the rest of the world has left you behind?” 

“All the time,” he said quietly after a moment. “You just defined my teen years, Hay.” 

I pretty much felt the same way. I sighed long and hard, realizing that was what had driven the two of us together back in the summer of 2001. “Well, it sucks.” 

“ _Tell_ me about it,” By said. “Do you think that this is our fault, or the world’s?” 

I thought about that. “Well, your mom says it’s just hard being a teen in general, so I _want_ to blame it on the world. But after the homecoming dance, I’m beginning to think that, at least in my case, attitude has a lot to do with it too.” 

Byron didn’t ask for an explanation for that; even though I hadn’t told him about the dance, I think he just understood me too well to even need to know the details. “Why don’t we both do something about that? Take a risk or two. We can do something a little out of character. And the next time we see our guys, we should take it just a step farther. Push our comfort zones a little—whatever that may mean at the time.” 

The first part of his statement sounded a lot like what I say to him all the time. I thought about the second part of it as he talked. He knows that I’ve had a hard time trusting Jordan when it comes to so many different things, so I figured this was his way of gently pushing me in the right direction. I was hoping that wouldn’t be a problem anymore. I’d realized that even if I push Jordan away, he’ll keep coming back, as long as I’d let him. It made me stop wanting to push him away. I was ready for more—ready for that next step. Ready for some clothing to come off. 

Add to that the fact that By, although I doubt I would be able to get him to admit it, must have crazy worries about sex and Jeff. He worries about everything, and I know several things had to be plaguing him on a regular basis. Once or twice when we’d talked, he’d mentioned Jeff’s ex-girlfriend and I’m fairly sure he was concerned about how he’d…measure up. “We’ll make a pact about it, okay? You can do it over Christmas, and me, I’ll do it whenever I see Jeff next.” 

Something about his tone of voice caught my attention. “Is Jeff not coming to Stoneybrook for Christmas?” I asked. I hadn’t seen Jeff online much since he’d started working for UPS. 

By grew quiet, but I can read him like a book. He was trying not to cry. “He wanted to,” he said in a voice just above a whisper, “but he can’t. He has to work. He’s not really thrilled about it either, but he needs the job if he’s ever going to get out of his dad’s house.” 

There was a pause, and then I heard a male voice talking in the background on his end. The voice was a little higher than By’s, which surprised me. “Is that Paul?” I asked. “Tell him I said hello.” 

There was a little shuffling on his end. “My friend Haley from Connecticut says hi,” he said, his mouth away from the phone. 

“Is she cute?” Paul asked. I laughed; such a typical guy response. 

“Yeah, she’s friggin’ adorable. But, sadly for you, she’s taken.” I giggled a little more. By came back to the phone. “I gotta go, Hay. Have a happy turkey day. I’ll email you when I get back on Sunday, okay?” 

I hung up the phone and went back to shuffling around the kitchen. There was only going to be two of us eating the snacks, but I wasn’t sure exactly what Becca would want to eat. As such, I’d put together a whole bunch of snack food. As much as we’d hung around together, it had never been just the two of us in my house. Mom had already banished Matt from the basement while Becca was over as part of his grounding. I almost felt sorry for him—almost. 

Becca had said she’d be over at four-thirty and she showed up exactly five minutes early. As was normal these days, she came in wearing layers of winter gear and a put out expression. “What’s the matter now?” I asked as she unraveled from her hat, gloves, scarf, coat and sweatshirt. 

“One guess,” she grumbled as she stored everything in her coat sleeves and hung up her coat. I smiled a little as she did that; when Matt’s friends come over, they drop things everywhere and leave giant messes. I had wondered why my mom trusted me enough to leave me home alone for the weekend, considering I didn’t feel like an adult or even close to it. But moments like this helped me see her point of view just a little. 

I thought about Becca’s comment. “Oh,” I said gently, trying not to make light of her situation but also not wanting to get into this conversation too much _again_. “Charlotte.” 

“Of course, Charlotte,” she responded. I walked down the stairs and she followed me, moping a little still. I plopped down on the couch, which was old and comfortable and a little worn out. She sat down facing me, rather than the television, her stocking feet pointed at me. “It’s a little different this time, though. She stopped me as I was leaving school and wanted to hang out with me this afternoon. She had the nerve to be insulted when I said I was coming over here instead.” 

I took a deep breath. “I would have been okay if you’d invited her,” I told her, being much nicer than I wanted to be. 

Becca looked more annoyed than before. “I appreciate that, but I didn’t _want_ to invite her. Charlotte has spent the past two months blowing me off, and now she wants to spend time with me? Ha!” She practically spit the last word out. I’d never seen her be so venomous before, especially not about her best friend. “How much do you want to bet that Bill and his family went out of town for the holiday?” 

I picked up the remote control. “I don’t think it’s worth speculating about,” I suggested. Becca huffed. “Did you want a snack?” I asked her. “I’ve got, like, eight bowls of snacks here, and if you’re not too cold, there’s always Ben and Jerry’s brownie batter ice cream.” 

Becca looked over at the coffee table, where bowls and bags lay everywhere. After a moment, she started to smile. “You’re hilarious,” she said. “Is that two different types of pretzels?” 

I began to giggle. “I’ll be honest—I didn’t buy most of these. They were what was left over from Matt’s party last weekend.” 

“Matt had a party?” Becca asked. I shrugged. As much as I love my brother, I was still really mad at him for not keeping his drunken idiot friends out of my bedroom. Becca didn’t read my expression, though. “How’s your brother doing? I haven’t seen him in years. Man, don’t get mad at me, but he was my very first crush.” 

I shook my head at her. “ _My_ brother?” I repeated. “Really?” It was her turn to shrug. I giggled again. “I’m not mad at you. I’m just horribly confused as to why you’d think he was cute.” 

She giggled with me, grabbing up a bowl of M &M’s. I picked up the twisty pretzels and the remote control. “Byron and Vanessa could ask you the same thing, you know.” 

I didn’t reply to that, other than to give her a grin. She was right, after all. Instead, I turned on the television and we settled in to watch. 

We’d been down there for about an episode and a half—probably a little more than an hour—when the doorbell rang. Becca, not used to the lights flashing every time someone was at the door, startled, her attention distracted from the screen. I got up and moved toward the stairs when I heard a thumping on the other staircase—Matt had decided to answer the door. Daddy wouldn’t be home for another hour and Mom had made what she called “a suicide mission;” in other words, she’d decided to brave the grocery store. I crept up the stairs, just to make sure that the visitor wasn’t Blake or Lydia, who were temporarily banned from the house. 

And it definitely wasn’t. Charlotte seemed flustered when Matt met her at the door, as if she didn’t know how to greet him. For his part, Matt looked confused and disappointed for a moment, and then greeted Charlotte with a wave of his hand. He held the door open and beckoned her inside, and then touched her wrist and pointed to the stairs. Charlotte looked at him, confused, until she saw me standing about halfway up the staircase, watching everything. “Hi,” she said tentatively. 

I raised my eyebrows. “Hi there. Come on down.” 

I hadn’t paused the episode when I got up and Becca was still watching. “Who was it?” she asked as I thundered down the stairs. She never took her eyes off the television, assuming I was alone. 

I looked at Charlotte, who looked uncharacteristically embarrassed. “Hi, Becca,” she said after a moment’s pause. 

Becca looked up in shock for a moment but then went back to her earlier expression of consternation. “When I told you I was going to be at Haley’s,” she said, reaching for the remote control and pausing the DVD, “that wasn’t an invitation to join me.” 

Charlotte’s expression was pained. I glanced at each girl in turn. “Do you want me to leave the room?” I asked. 

Charlotte flashed me a brief, grateful smile. “Yes, thanks,” she replied at the exact same moment Becca crossed her arms across her front and said, “No, stay.” Not knowing what to do, I retreated to a stool in the back corner of the room, next to the laundry room. I didn’t think Charlotte would like that, but Becca was actually my guest, and she’d asked me to stay. 

Charlotte perched daintily on the edge of the couch. “I won’t stay long,” she said, addressing me and then turning her attention fully to Becca. “I just needed to talk to someone about something.” 

Becca was pouting. “Go talk to Vanessa!” she shouted at Charlotte, causing Char to lean back a bit, away from the ire. “Or Bill, or whoever. They’re obviously your new best friends, because you _never_ have time for me anymore.” 

Charlotte looked wounded. Suddenly she seemed a lot younger than she usually did—very much sixteen instead of the adult she pretended she was most of the time. “I can’t talk to them about this,” she said quietly. “I tried to talk to Vanessa, but she just wanted to make a joke out of it.” 

Becca looked away from Charlotte, still pouting. She might not have been interested in Char’s issues, but I was. “What is it, Char?” I asked quietly. 

She shifted so she was facing me. “Can I trust you?” she asked. I had a feeling that was the main question Charlotte had asked herself about me on a regular basis. “If I tell you this, you won’t repeat it to anyone, not even Byron or Jordan?” 

I wondered, vaguely, what was such a big deal that it required me to practically swear an oath to her. “Of course I won’t. It won’t leave this room, right, Bec?” Becca grunted and wrapped her arms tighter around herself. “I won’t tell anyone, and obviously, Becca’s not even listening. Go ahead.” 

Char was still not reassured. “And you won’t laugh or make a joke?” she said. 

“When was the last time you heard me laugh about something that was serious to someone else?” I asked, bewildered. Okay, sure, I made fun of some things By took seriously, but By took just about everything seriously. I would never get to joke with him ever if I used that criteria. 

“Middle school.” 

That was probably true, to be honest. “All I can say in response to that is that I’m not even close to the same person I was in middle school.” 

Charlotte watched me for a moment but didn’t reply. After a little while, I shrugged at her. She could either trust me or not, tell me or not. She was the one who had shown up at my house uninvited because she was so desperate to unburden herself. Finally she sighed and sagged into the couch, sitting where I had been for most of the afternoon. Becca was still turned toward the wall, ignoring Char (and, by extension, me). “Well, okay,” she said after a long pause. I didn’t move from my stool, but I shifted in my seat. “The other day, Bill and I were alone at his house. Everyone else was at his sister’s dance recital, but he’d decided to skip it. Anyway, we went up to his room. We started...” she faded out, looking unsure again. 

I wasn’t sure whether she was shying away from talking about the topic or if she didn’t have the correct phrasing. “Fooling around?” I prompted, even though it probably wasn’t the words she wanted. Charlotte is usually so prim and proper most of the time, but I didn’t think there was a prim way to talk about making out. 

Char blushed and looked flustered again. “Yeah, I guess.” She stared at her feet, encased in a pair of neat and tidy shoes. Charlotte is the only person I know who can walk through snow and not look like it. “He told me to tell him when to stop. And I got caught up in the moment, and I didn’t.” 

“Didn’t what?” 

She grabbed the blanket that was thrown over the arm of the couch and covered herself in it. “Didn’t tell him to stop,” she clarified. 

I had been leaning against the back of the stool, my head on the wall, until she said that. I sat upright and stared at her, but she wasn’t looking at me. “Charlotte,” I said quietly. I was pretty sure my mom hadn’t come home, but I couldn’t be entirely certain, “Are you telling us you and Bill…” I paused, much like Char had a moment before. She turned to me and watched me fumble with phrasing also. “You and Bill had sex?” 

Char made a small, subtle nod, looking like she was ready to burst into tears. She finally had Becca’s attention, whether she knew it or not. Becca turned away from the wall, briefly horrified, before she adjusted her expression. I wrinkled up my forehead. “I’m not sure what you want here, Char,” I said after neither of the other two spoke. “Do you want us to congratulate you? I will, if that’s what you’re looking for, but something tells me that’s not how you’re hoping we’ll respond.” She shook her head but then shrugged. I don’t think she knew how she wanted us to react either, other than to not tease her. I took a deep breath. “How are you feeling right now?” 

“Overwhelmed.” Charlotte followed my lead and took a deep breath of her own. “It was all really quick and I didn’t have time to feel much while it was happening. But afterward, I just…” she faded out. I finally jumped up from the stool and sat down between Becca and Charlotte on the couch. Charlotte wasn’t crying anymore, but she seemed really jittery. I put my arm around her and she actually seemed to find comfort in that. “After it was over,” she continued, “it hit me. What we just did was _big_. It was really serious, Haley,” she said, addressing this all straight at me. Becca watched, very little emotion passing across her face, from the other side of the couch. “It’s not something I can take back. But it’s also not something I think I’m ready to keep doing.” 

I hugged her closer for a moment. “Well, did you tell him that?” I asked. 

She shook her head. “No,” Charlotte replied. She sounded shocked that I’d suggest that. “I couldn’t do that.” 

“If you can’t talk about sex,” I said, very sensibly (I thought). “Then you’re definitely not ready to be having it.” 

Char started to nod, but then stopped. She pulled back. “How do you know so much about sex?” she asked suspiciously. “You said you were a virgin.” 

I cringed. “I am, I guess,” I said, knowing that didn’t make much sense. But with both By and Jordan telling me I was, it was beginning to undo three years of me believing I wasn’t a virgin. “Look, Char, let’s just say I’ve learned a lot of this the hard way, okay?” Becca leaned forward, watching me critically. “Take that to mean whatever you want.” 

Charlotte looked like she wanted to question some more, but Becca stepped in first. “Charlotte,” she said quietly. Both Char and I turned to look at her. “You just gotta trust Haley on this. I’ve figured out she usually knows what she’s talking about. And that sounded like something your mom would say if this was a topic you could talk to her about, didn’t it?” 

Char nodded. “Yeah, I guess.” She pushed her bangs out of her eyes a little bit and turned back to me, as if waiting for some more words of wisdom. 

I looked up at the ceiling. “What I would suggest is asking Bill how he feels about it. He could be feeling the exact same way you do, you know.” I turned back to her and smiled. She smiled back, however wavering the smile might have been. “And if he’s not, just tell him how you feel. He sounds like he’s a good guy. He’d have stopped, even in the middle, if you’d asked him to, right?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “With me and Jordan, it’s been hard. We both have our reasons for wanting to wait, but there are times when I think I’m ready for something and then change my mind. He understands that, and that’s how I know I can trust him.” 

Charlotte looked chagrined—worried about trying to backpedal on her relationship, I guess. “And what kinds of things are you and Jordan doing when you change your mind?” she asked. 

Even though it was a fair question, I didn’t really want to answer—mostly because I was afraid that if I told the truth, she’d start asking about my virginity again. And this really wasn’t the time or place to get into _that_. “Um,” I said finally, “A lot less than you’d expect. We keep our clothes on, for the most part.” Charlotte accepted that without question, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Look, what are you two doing on Sunday?” 

Charlotte shrugged, but Becca shook her head. “We’re heading to Oakley for the weekend. Even Jessi will be there on Saturday, so it’s going to be great.” 

I thought about how much I’d miss Matt—even the TMI version of him that had been hanging around with me far too often the last week or so—if he moved to New York and I grinned at her. “That’s great. Sounds like a good time.” She nodded. “Charlotte, I have a mission on Sunday, and I need a second person. Do you want to come with me?” 

“What kind of mission?” she asked suspiciously. 

I shrugged. “It’s a secret. If you want to join me, meet me in front of Renwick’s at about one on Sunday.” Charlotte made a face, but she didn’t protest or agree. I sat back in my seat in the middle of the couch, but something was poking me in the ass. I reached underneath me and pulled out the remote. “Char?” I asked. “We’re watching Gilmore Girls. Want to join us?” 

She shook her head. “No, I’ve taken up too much of your time anyway. Plus I told my mom I’d be home half an hour ago. She’s probably worried about me.” She stood up, putting the blanket back where it had been hanging. “Thanks for listening to me and not laughing.” Becca and I both nodded seriously and she headed toward the stairs. She was about halfway up and just out of sight when she called back. “Haley? I’ll see you at one on Sunday.” 

Becca and I looked at each other after we heard the front door close behind Charlotte. “Wow,” Becca said after a moment. I waited, knowing she wasn’t done, wondering which part of what had just happened had interested her the most. “You know,” she said finally, continuing her thought, “Every time someone tells me about losing their virginity, it sounds worse and worse. I’m thinking of becoming Catholic and then a nun. Sounds safer for the head and heart.” 

I laughed. “Oh, Bec,” I said as she looked bewildered at my response. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because I’ve said the same thing myself.” She relaxed a little. “I don’t feel that way anymore, but I have definitely been there.” 

She sat back in her seat and turned toward me again. “Haley,” she said, “I have a feeling this is the last thing you want to talk about right now, but…” I tensed up. Here it comes, I thought, and I was right. “You said you ‘guessed’ you were a virgin. What does that mean?” 

I didn’t answer her directly. I squeezed the remote and inadvertently turned the television off. She was watching me closely. “Becca, how do you define sex?” I finally asked her quietly. 

Becca looked surprised, although I’m not sure if it was because of the question I’d asked or because I was avoiding her question. She turned away for a moment and pondered that before she answered. “I don’t know,” she said slowly, still mulling the question over. “I’d guess that for straight girls, it would be defined as…” Becca faded out and I could read her clearly this time: she didn’t want to say it. Becca’s always been that girl who didn’t talk about sex—who always used vague euphemisms for everything. 

“Insert tab A into slot B?” I said when she didn’t finish her statement. Despite how serious she was, Becca actually grinned about that and then nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” 

“Why?” Becca asked. It was a vague question, but I knew what she meant. 

“Well, everyone defines sex differently, and so everyone defines virginity differently. So, when I say I guess I’m a virgin, it depends upon what definition you’re using.” 

I said all of that while looking at the remote control rather than her. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Becca frown. “You don’t want to talk about it,” she said seriously. 

“No, not really. Nothing personal.” 

“One last question, then,” she said, “And I’ll let it go. By my generic, tab A to slot B definition, are you a virgin?” I didn’t answer her. Instead, I flipped the television back on, still intent on the remote. Becca’s eyes went wide. “Oh,” she said. 

“Are you ready for me to turn the DVD back on?” I asked, a little more irritated than I meant to sound. She nodded and I punched the button. 

We’d watched for a few minutes when there was a lull in the action on screen. “I’m sorry,” Becca said. 

I turned away from the television, looking her head on. “For what? For being a good friend? For trying to figure out what was wrong with me?” 

She shook her head. “For still questioning you about it after you’d asked me to stop.” 

I tried to smile at her. “You’re forgiven for that. Completely. I just don’t want to talk about it, okay? The story would make Char’s story look like a movie love scene. You’d want to find a nunnery on a mountain top after hearing it.” 

Becca looked a little nauseous. “I guess there’s something to be said for different definitions of virginity, huh?” 

*** 

We had a quiet Thanksgiving at home that year. Normally, we go to Rhode Island and have turkey with my mom’s four younger sisters, but I had to be at work at six a.m. on Black Friday. (Apparently, nothing says Christmas like housewares.) I know both Daddy and Matt were breathing sighs of relief over that—for two different reasons. None of Mom’s relatives has bothered to learn sign language, so Matt always feels left out—it’s hard for the rest of us to translate for him while we’re eating. And Daddy says that Aunt Sandy’s house is always too noisy and too crowded, but I think he just hates hearing my uncles bragging all weekend long. 

We’d eaten a later supper and I was assigned the task of cleaning the dishes. I had just gotten started when the doorbell rang. “Are you expecting anyone?” I heard my mom call to my dad. 

“Nope,” Daddy yelled back from the interior of the fridge. His job had been putting away the leftovers, and he was just about finished. “How ‘bout you, Jellybean?” he asked me. 

I wrinkled my nose at the baby nickname and shook my head. By that time, Mom had made it to the door and I could hear her talking to someone. “Haley?” she said, stopping in the doorway, “Vanessa’s here to see you.” I dried my hands on the back of my jeans, making Mom scowl, and headed out to the vestibule. As I walked by my mother, she snagged me and whispered in my ear. “Keep it a short visit, okay?” she said. 

I didn’t acknowledge that. Instead, I turned my attention to Vanessa. “Happy Thanksgiving,” I said, probably a lot less enthusiastically than she would have liked. “I’m washing dishes. Join me in the kitchen?” 

I plunged my hands straight back into the dishwater, partly because I wanted to finish the dishes before it got cold and partly because then I had an excuse not to look at her. Vanessa hopped up so she was sitting on the counter next to the dishwasher. The Pikes do that at home all the time, but it’s not really appreciated at my house. “My mom will kill you if she catches you sitting like that,” I told her. “If you want a seat, grab a chair from the dining room. Or, if you wanted, you could actually help me.” 

Vanessa hopped down from the counter and instead leaned against it quietly (and infuriatingly) watching me work. “I had to get the fuck out of my house,” she said out of nowhere. I looked at her briefly and shrugged. I didn’t blame her, exactly. Forced family togetherness is hard in general, but when you have that many brothers and sisters? “Adam actually came home for the weekend, and he’s been strutting around like he owns the place. Nick’s crabby because Mom told him no dates tomorrow night or Saturday and he had to cancel some plans. And Margo and Claire? They’re just so…juvenile.” 

“Well,” I said tartly, “they _are_ juveniles, Vanessa.” 

Vanessa huffed. “Well,” she retorted, matching my tone, “They don’t have to act like it.” 

We were quiet for a moment before I decided that this was the best time to ask the questions I’d been waiting two months to ask. “So, did you come over here to spend time with me or because you knew my house would be quiet?” Vanessa raised an eyebrow at me and crossed her arms in front of herself. I could tell that I’d either hit a nerve or I was irritating her; both were equally likely in my mind. “This summer,” I continued, deciding it didn’t matter as long as I got my words out, “you got mad at me for making you the ‘consolation prize,’ despite the fact that we hadn’t really spent time together for three years. I finally decided to give you a real chance and I told you something that almost no one knows. And we hung out together for, oh, about three weeks before _you_ ditched me.” 

Vanessa’s expression was one of pure consternation. She flashed her eyes at me defiantly but didn’t say a word. I finished loading dishes in the drainer and reached in to pull the plug from the sink. The water swirled noisily for a moment before I started speaking again. “Why did I have to hear from P that I was welcome to join you guys at the Rosebud every Friday? Why didn’t that information come from you or Charlotte?” I took a deep breath, surprised to find I was shaking a bit. “Char, okay, I understand her point of view. She trusts me about as far as she can throw me. But she didn’t spend the summer trying to get me to spend time with her. If you don’t really want to be my friend, I understand. I get it. We’ll quit pretending, okay? But right now, we’re playing a game, and I don’t like that you get to set all the rules.” 

She spoke for the first time in a while. “You never did like when someone else was in charge, did you?” she asked me, almost sounding amused despite her clear irritation with me. 

“No, I never have,” I replied, even though that wasn’t entirely true. Yes, I’ve always been stubborn and highly competitive, but it’s only been the past few years that I’ve really considered myself a control freak. I dried my hands on a dish towel this time. “I’m not saying, Vanessa, that we need to spend all our time together. That’s silly. We both have boyfriends and other friends and interests. But if you and Char were going to be hanging out with your boys and their friends, there’s no reason why me and Bec couldn’t come sometimes.” 

Vanessa didn’t answer that directly. “How come you give everyone else nicknames but me?” she asked. 

“What?” 

“By, Char, Bec.” She ticked off the names on her fingers as she went. “But you always call me by my full name.” 

She’d thrown me off my stride with the change in direction. I suddenly got how Becca felt the day before when I’d asked her to define sex. “It’s nothing personal. For me and your brother, it’s an old joke. And Charlotte…you call her Char sometimes. Everyone calls her that. I guess I’m just a nickname kind of girl, but I haven’t found one for you yet.” 

Vanessa nodded. She no longer looked obstinate like she had through most of the conversation. “I guess I just wasn’t over this summer entirely,” she said after a moment. “You’d told me you’d spend time with me after my brothers left, and you did. But I was just worried that you’d turn around and change your mind about me again. I don’t think you realize how hurt I was when you stopped talking to me back when we were fourteen.” She took a deep breath and her voice took on an unsteady quality. Was Vanessa, the tough and sarcastic, actually going to cry? “I mean, I know now that I’d deserved it. But you were my best friend. And suddenly, the only person you wanted to be around was my brother, and like everyone else, I thought you were dating him. Being ditched for a boyfriend hurt like hell.” 

I nodded in an attempt at sympathy. “I can imagine,” I told her, trying not to be crabby about it. It’s not that I didn’t get her point of view; it was just three years of hurt based upon several lies that she now knew weren’t true. “I know how bad Becca’s hurting right now because Charlotte ditched her for Bill, and how icky I feel over all of this.” 

Vanessa pretended she wasn’t sniffling back a few tears. I went along with it to protect her ego (for whatever reason.) “Yeah, and none of these people are dating your brother,” she replied. 

I was surprised by how much that particular aspect bothered her. My favorite aunt was actually married to her childhood best friend’s brother. When you were growing up, where else were you supposed to find guys? 

My mom appeared in the doorway then and pointed at her wrist, where a watch would be, if she wore one. “Let me walk you to the door,” I told Vanessa, who shrugged. 

Vanessa had left her coat neatly draped over an arm of the couch, and she picked it up as we walked through the room. “Want to come hang out with us next Friday?” she asked, almost reluctantly. 

“At the Rosebud?” I asked. She nodded. “Thanks, but no. The smell…” Vanessa quirked an eyebrow and looked at me cockeyed. I didn’t explain any further, though. “Maybe, instead, you and Char could bring your guys over here in a couple weeks? Maybe right after school gets out for Christmas. We have enough snack food to choke a horse…or feed a couple teenaged boys.” 

She smirked. “Sounds good. I’m sure P will be all for it. I mean, free food, right?” 

“Yeah. Ask him, and I’ll talk to Char about it next time I see her.” She opened the front door and walked outside. I stood in my slippers in the doorway as she walked down the front walk instead of cutting across the yard like she would have done if there were no snow. “Bye, Van,” I called after her. 

She smiled for the first time since she’d come into the house. “See you later, Hay,” she called back. 

*** 

Friday and Saturday were a blur; I worked sixteen hours those two days alone. I went to bed after work on Saturday exhausted and slept through until nearly noon on Sunday. 

Charlotte is one of those people who is always on time, practically to the minute. I had only just pulled up at Renwick’s and found the invitation when I heard her tentatively rap on the passenger’s window. “Are we having lunch?” she asked as I climbed out of the car, before I could greet her. She was wearing almost as many layers as Becca did in the cold and between the scarf and hat, she looked completely confused. 

“No,” I said as I fished around for my purse. “Actually, we’re not even going inside. We’re going to Baby and Company.” 

“Baby and Company?” Char repeated. “Why?” 

“I need a baby gift. Are you coming?” 

I started walking and she followed me. “Are you trying to give me some kind of safe sex lesson here?” she asked, sounding both suspicious and a little upset. 

“Do I need to?” I retorted. Charlotte’s face became a mass of worry and I raised my eyebrow. I guessed that was a yes, but in the crosswalk in the middle of Rosedale Road was not the place. I shook my head a little. For someone so smart, Char certainly has these moments of complete cluelessness. I guessed she really did get swept up in the moment with Bill, but I hoped it wouldn’t come back to haunt her. “No, I’m not trying to teach you anything. Here.” I pulled the invitation out of my pocket and handed it to her. 

She inspected the paper for a moment and then began reading out loud. “A baby shower for Tiffany Kilbourne,” she said. “Tiffany?” 

“Adam Pike’s ex-girlfriend. We chat on IM some.” We were now inside Baby and Company and I unwound my scarf a little and shoved my gloves in my pocket. “She asked me to come and said I could bring a friend. I’m pretty sure she thinks that this shower will all be her mom’s friends, and that none of her old friends from high school will bother to show.”

We left Baby and Company an hour later, laden down with a gift basket of sorts. I’d gotten Tiffany’s registry printed out, boggled at it for a while (what the hell is a bottle warmer?) and then found a sales associate and made her earn her pay for the next forty minutes as she helped Char and I put together a gift. We’d gotten long-sleeved undershirts in two sizes, some receiving blankets and a travel sized container of baby wipes. And when I say ‘we,’ I mean just me. Char followed me around, not saying much and looking mildly put out. 

I kind of got excited by buying baby things. Don’t get me wrong—I didn’t envy Tiff in any way and I was in no hurry to be a mom…especially not a teenaged, single mom. I think it was just the fact that everything we picked up was so tiny. 

So I was chipper on the drive over to Tiff’s, despite Char’s now somber mood. “I’ve never been to Tiffany’s house,” I babbled as she watched me, almost expressionless. “But I think she’s rich. I wonder if it’s a mansion.” 

“It’s pretty big.” Char finally spoke. I glanced briefly at her questioningly before turning my eyes back to the road. “She’s Maria Kilbourne’s sister, right? I know Maria lives right between Bill and P’s houses.” 

“Well, great then. If Bill is home, you can go talk to him afterward.” 

Charlotte made a sound that could best be described as ‘harrumph.’ “I’m not sure I can do that,” she said finally. 

I pulled onto McLelland. “Would you rather just keep having sex with him, without regard to your own feelings?” I asked. “You told me the other day that you weren’t ready to do it again. He either needs to respect that or take a hike.” 

She set her mouth in a thin line, trying to gain the resolve. It looked as if she were failing. “Why are you so intent upon me having this conversation with Bill? Why do you care?”

“I care about you,” I said as I pulled up on the street in front of what must have been Tiffany’s house—there was a gaudy stork and blue balloons coming off the mailbox. “We were friends, once upon a time. And I don’t want you to do something with Bill just to make him happy, when it doesn’t make you happy.” 

Charlotte said no more; she just hurried out of the car and opened the rear door. By the time I made it out of my seatbelt, she was already carrying the gift, and by the time I had the car locked, she was halfway up the driveway. “Char, wait,” I called. “I’m the one with the invitation. We should probably go in together.” 

She acquiesced—not verbally, but she slowed to a stop so I could catch up to her. I rang the doorbell and she stood beside me, ramrod straight. We were silent for a moment, and then she hissed into my ear. “You don’t even know Bill,” she said. 

I turned toward her, ready to agree, but the door opened as we stood there, unhappily looking at each other. The young woman at the door was about Charlotte’s height and had a similar coloring, but with the build of an athlete. She looked at us, confusion washing across her face. I didn’t recover fast enough; the girl stared for a moment before Charlotte plastered a fake smile on her face and held out the gift. “We’re here for the shower,” she said lightly. 

She smiled. “You’re Bill’s girlfriend, aren’t you?” she asked Charlotte. 

Char nodded. “Yes, I’m Charlotte. Maria, right?” Maria nodded back and held the door open for the two of us. I followed behind the two of them, wondering when Charlotte had become so good at hiding her real feelings behind a mask. Probably, I thought, it was around the same time she learned how to mimic the adults in her life. “This is my friend Haley,” she told Maria as the two of them walked side by side. 

Maria lit up and turned to grin at me over her shoulder. “Oh, so _you’re_ Haley. Tiff was so relieved when you said you’d come. All of the RSVPs were from ‘old ladies’ so she was hoping you’d sit with us at our table. How did you all meet, anyway?” 

“Long story,” I said. Maria nodded, so I went on. “I’m Jordan Pike’s girlfriend.” 

“Jordan? Is he Nick and Adam’s brother?” She didn’t wait for a reply, just crinkled up her forehead in confusion. “Wait. I thought that was the gay one.” 

I shook my head, amused. It can be easy to mix up the triplets if you don’t spend much time with them. “I assure you, he’s definitely not gay.” 

“I should say not,” a voice said from the doorway. Tiff walked—or should I say, waddled—into the room. She was smiling. “You have no idea, Maria. You’d turn your back on those two for a second and they’d be making out." 

I laughed, because it was at least partly true. “How are you, Tiffany? You look good.” 

She put a hand on her belly, which looked like she’d swallowed a basketball. “You’re lying, but I appreciate the effort. I’m apparently one of those women who gains weight everywhere when they’re pregnant, and I have horribly swollen cankles.” She held out one foot, despite the fact that her ankles were covered. “Can you believe I have six more weeks left? And the doctor said he’ll probably be late.” 

I honestly couldn’t believe she had _only_ six weeks left. Where had the time gone? “Wow,” I said in response. Charlotte had gone wide-eyed briefly when Tiff came in, but she covered it quickly. “This is my friend Charlotte. She’s dating your neighbor, Bill.” 

Tiff waved at her and Char waved back. “Come on in and have a seat. We’re going to sit over here in the corner, away from the overly-proud gramma-to-be and her friends. Shannon said she’d come over and join us, but I have a feeling she’s too adult for that.” 

Maria waved that off. “Actually, she’s going to stay over there because that’s where the champagne is,” she said with a snort. 

We talked quietly for a while, about school (Tiff was taking some business classes at the community college, while Maria was mostly in advanced placement classes, like Charlotte) and about activities before Tiff asked the question I’d been waiting for. “Have you heard how Adam’s doing?” she asked me. 

I shook my head. “All I really know is that he joined a fraternity and has been partying a lot. Jordan was really peeved at him for a while there.” We’d helped ourselves to snack food and I was drinking an orange juice. “He was home for the weekend though. I didn’t see him, but Vanessa mentioned that.” 

She nodded, but she looked a little hurt. I didn’t tell her what Jordan had said to me about Adam making the rounds with the sorority girls. I could tell she was hoping Adam were in better touch or had made plans to see her over the weekend, but hey, it’s Adam. Tiff shook off the expression. “And what about Jordan and Byron?” 

“Jordan’s been hanging around with me for too long. He has all these wild plans that even he knows he’s never going to actually do. The last one was going to medical school.” Maria raised her eyebrows; Tiff had mentioned she wanted to be a doctor, but I knew Jordan wasn’t serious about following through with that. “So he can’t settle on a major at all. At this rate, it’s going to take him at least five years to get out of college. By’s having major trouble too—he hates his. If I know him, and I do, he’ll be changing schools next year.” I'd had this feeling in my gut ever since he’d talked with me, way back in the beginning of September. 

Tiff changed the subject to Charlotte at that point and started asking her all kinds of questions. That led to Charlotte and Maria debating Ivy League schools, which is what they both wanted to attend. I hung back from that conversation. I’d already done all my applying: two schools my mom wanted me to go to; two my dad had picked out; and two I actually wanted. Mom and Daddy were not thrilled about the last part, mostly because I wouldn’t tell them _where_ I’d applied. I figured there was no point in getting into _that_ argument unless I got accepted. I was really hoping I didn’t end up defaulting to UConn (even if my mom went there) or Stoneybrook University (even if Daddy wanted me to be close by) like maybe eighty percent of my classmates. 

After a while, Tiff and Maria got called to the front of the room; it was time to open presents. Charlotte and I sat in the back, quietly watching and saying “Awww!” at the appropriate times with everyone else. They were about three presents into the stack when Char started talking. “I’m probably not pregnant,” she announced in a low voice, out of nowhere. 

I was momentarily thrown by her declaration. “That’s good,” I observed, and it was…even if I wasn’t sure if she’d come to that conclusion by science or wishful thinking. 

“And I definitely don’t want to be any time soon,” she continued. She wasn’t watching me, but Tiff, who had just opened a tiny little sleeper set with matching hat and socks. Everyone else but Charlotte and I cooed over it, just as they had over every other gift. “You can’t go to Harvard with a baby. I’m not about to ruin my life because of some boy.” 

I smiled. She sounded more like the Charlotte I remembered—the one who’d been talking about Harvard since she was in seventh grade. “So what are you going to tell Bill?” I asked her. 

She didn’t answer right away; Tiff was opening our gift. I turned back to the action as well. Tiffany exclaimed over each little item in the gift and thanked us warmly for it as Shannon recorded it so we could get a thank you note. Charlotte finally turned back to me. “That I like him,” she began, “but that the other day was a mistake and that we need to take a step back. I still want to go out with him, but I think maybe we should see a little less of each other and maybe keep a little more clothing on when we’re together.” 

I nodded. I had a feeling that this might be the end of Charlotte and Bill. Nothing Char had said was terrible, but I could see some guys possibly taking that as an insult. (I hoped I was wrong, though.) “Becca would probably like the last bit—well, the piece about you two seeing less of each other.” 

“I’ve been pretty horrible to her, haven’t I?” she said. I shrugged. I thought Char had been insensitive, but I could definitely understand how it had happened. “How can I make it up to her?” 

“Make plans with her and keep them?” I suggested. Char glared at me like she thought I was kidding, but I didn’t back down. “I’m not being facetious. I really think that’s all it will take.” 

Charlotte excused herself. Maria had pointed out the bathroom earlier, and she made a beeline for it. I went back to mindlessly saying “Aww!” and “That’s so cute!” to every little item that Tiff opened. I hadn’t brought Charlotte to Tiff’s shower to try to convince her of my point of view; I’d been hoping to just spend time with her. But I was glad that _something_ had gotten through to her. 

Char returned a short time later. “I sent a couple of text messages,” she said in a whisper. 

“From the bathroom?” 

“It’s more polite than doing it here and looking like I’m bored, right?” She was definitely correct about that. I nodded. “Bill’s home from his grandmother’s. I’m going to stop over there when the shower’s over and talk to him. Will you wait for me?” I nodded again, although I was worried that the conversation would become protracted and I’d be sitting in my car for an hour or more. “I also sent a message to Becca asking her to come over and hang out one night next week. Do you want to join us?” 

I shook my head, but I smiled. “I appreciate the offer, but I think you and Becca need some alone time. If she says no, though, let me know. I’ll drag her to your house and sit on her so she doesn’t leave until you two get to talk.” 

Charlotte chuckled lightly, but her face lit up. “I might just take you up on that,” she replied. 

As soon as the gift opening was over and everyone stood to leave, Charlotte slipped her coat on and hurried through the door. I took my time, letting everyone else say goodbye to Tiff and her family before I made my way over to them. “It was a lovely shower,” I told them as a group. “Thanks for inviting me.” 

Tiffany gave me a hug, which was awkward to do around that giant belly. I could actually feel the baby move as I gave her a quick squeeze. “Thanks for coming.” She picked up the pad on which Shannon had been writing down the gifts. “I’m going to need Charlotte’s address so I can send her a thank you note,” she told me. 

I rattled off Char’s address, pausing for a moment to remember her house number. “Honestly, though,” I told Tiff, “She should be thanking you.” Both Tiff and Maria raised their eyebrows, and I saw Shannon and Mrs. Kilbourne look at each other questioningly. “It’s a long story. I’ll email you, okay?” 

I chatted with Maria and Tiff for a little while longer before my phone started buzzing. Excusing myself, I checked my texts and saw a new one from Charlotte. “Going to stay at Bill’s for dinner. Mrs. Korman will drive me home.” I smiled; I wasn’t sure Char had said everything she wanted to say to Bill, but obviously, what she had said had gone well. 

I went home a short time later, craving some peace and quiet. After dinner, I shut the door to my room and lay on my bed for almost an hour, just decompressing. After that I logged into my computer and my email, because By had said he would email me. I found not just his email, but three others. I read Byron’s first. It was a short synopsis of Thanksgiving—apparently, Paul’s family eats goose instead of turkey. After that, I found a quick missive from Jordan: “I’m home from Dave’s place. Call me tonight, xoxoqqq.” I laughed at his continuation of an old inside joke. 

Tiff sent me the next email. “I’m going to send you a thank you note too but I just wanted to thank you for coming today. It meant a lot to have someone to talk with, someone who was there because she liked me and not my mom. Thanks again.” 

I shook my head. It had been almost exactly five months ago that I’d met Tiff for the first time and shouted at her and called her my worst enemy. Back then, she hadn’t even known she was pregnant. Amazing. 

The last message was even more surprising: 

To: je11y6ean_h  
From: charlotte_johanssen  
Subject: you and me  
Haley,  
I told you earlier that I’d been horrible to Becca and I definitely have been. However, I don’t think I’ve been fair to you either. As I walked over to Bill’s earlier today, I tried to think of a single reason why I shouldn’t have just listened to you when we first talked on Wednesday. I couldn’t think of one, except that I was being childish.  
That summer that you stopped being friends with the rest of us was a hard one for all of our friends I think. That was the year both my grandparents died. It was also the summer I got my period for the first time, about three years after the rest of you did. I was having a rough time and I blamed it on everyone else. That wasn’t fair at all.  
When we were growing up, you always had more friends than I did, and all the boys liked you. I had moments when I wanted to be more like you and was really jealous, and other moments when I wished you weren’t so loud or so friendly because I just wanted a little bit of privacy. These days, you still have the pluses that drew everyone to you, but you’ve softened most of your minuses. I can’t picture you telling everyone my secrets anymore like you did a couple of times back in sixth and seventh grade. I’ve grown up a lot too, but I know I’m not there yet. I’m hoping you can forgive me for being bratty and petty. Maybe we could start over fresh?  
Your friend, Charlotte

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to my high school friends, Kelly, Ali and ‘the Horde’ for making life more…interesting…to this day.  
> Coming next in _A Year Apart_ : Only exams stand between one of our heroes and home in the month of December.


End file.
